Standard Mischief

Yea, everyone is ranting about Judge Alito now, but a little known decision was handed down today, and it deserves as big a notice as Kelo v. New London (eminent domain free-for-all for local governments)

It’s not a big news story, in fact the first mention of the case I saw was in the Guardian, a UK media company, and then it was only a blurb (I think those supremes refused to hear the case, so New York is apparently still the winner). I can not currently find anything in Google News about “Thomas Huckaby” or “Huckaby v. New York”, which is kinda disturbing.

Doing a regular Google search, however, does bring up details on the case, because it has been appealed several times and thus has been in the news in the past.

From law.com:

Although Thomas L. Huckaby of Tennessee spends little time in New York, does not live in New York and does virtually no work in New York, New York claims it is entitled to tax 100 percent of his income because his employer is based in Queens. An appellate court has unanimously held that the state is right.

Personally, I find the whole idea of income taxes as unjust and unconstitutional. If I owe a percentage of what I earn as income tax, then I’m a slave by whatever percentage that is to that state. However, the idea that the 16th amendment was not properly ratified was pretty much laughed out of court so I know we are on the hook for it. (Just for the record, taxes on unearned income, like interest and dividends, or taxes on corporate income would be OK by me.)

The questions is: To whom does a telecommuter pay state income tax? Most states resolve the issue by simply apportioning income.

For example, if an employee works 80 percent of the time in his or her own state and 20 percent of the time in the employer’s state, 80 percent of his or her income is taxed by the home state and 20 percent is taxed by the employer’s home state.

New York, however, has different ideas on how to tax out-of-state residents.

In New York, if the employee works out of state for convenience rather than employer necessity, the state clams it is entitled to tax 100 percent of the income earned. Since some states, such as Connecticut, base their income tax on where the taxpayer lives rather than where the income is earned, that means some workers are subjected to double taxation on the same income.

Is there any chance at all that if he became unemployed he would be able to receive double unemployment?

To put this all in the Standard Mischief libertarian viewpoint, this is another great example of how corporations have more rights than those living, breathing, thingys. (You know, batteries. Oh wait, I mean citizens.)

Corporations, of course, can incorporate in Delaware, or move offshore to avoid taxes. Tom Huckaby chose to live in Tennessee, most likely, because of quality of life issues. By living in another state, he is gaining virtually nothing when New York keeps the streetlights burning, or removes the snow from the street, or hauls away the trash.

It would have been interesting to see how the supremes came down on this issue, except for the zero coverage so far by the mainstream media (and I’d like to have added the obligatory Wikipedia link, but that has failed me also today). Eventually some details ought to show up, and I’ll update this post.

Update 2005-11-01: The “Thomas Huckaby” search on Google news is beginning to bear fruit.

http://www.nashvillecitypaper.com/

It doesn’t, however, indicated which of the supremes voted to let this case stand. I have to guess that at least five supremes voted to do that and I’d like to know which ones. New York state shouldn’t inherently have the power to tax across state borders.

Update 2005-11-03: Reading further, I’m beginning to understand how cases are chosen to be reviewed by the court. A speech by Rehnquist in 2001 explains everything pretty well. The chief justice and his clerks pick the cases to be reviewed. Any other justice can also add cases to the agenda. Cases that have not been selected by at least a single judge are rejected. Only four judges need to vote to be able to review the case and hear oral arguments. This is called the rule of four. Cases that don’t get the required four votes are rejected without comments and without a recorded vote.

I think that pretty much explains why this case is such a “non-issue”.

Friday night I got the offer, Saturday morning I was packing. Sundown, I got dropped off. Hiker support brother had made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, A drop-off and a pick-up along the Appalachian Trail.

At dusk, I arrived at the Blackburn trail center, and I noticed something going on inside. There were pumpkins on display, so I assumed a Halloween party. I wasn’t invited, so I ascended the trail to the camping area.

There I found a few tents set up, but everything was quiet. I assumed the other hikers were down at the party. I had a heck of a time setting up, because my lines were all tangled, but I got it eventually. I lashed my pack to the tree and changed into some polypro thermals to sleep in.

In chilly weather, It’s always a good idea to top up the fuel tanks before sleeping, but I surprised myself by downing an entire package of Pepperidge Farm oatmeal raisin cookies. This is despite just being fed a steak dinner by hiker support brother. I crawled into bed, got comfy and toasty warm, and spent a good thirty minutes drifting off into a nice snooze.

All of a sudden someone started screaming shear terror, “Help, Help, Help! There’s a guy outside and he’s waving a flashlight around! Help! Is anyone going to take a look? Help!”

I had my flaps open so I could star gaze, so I was pretty sure no one was out there. It took a moment to realize I was the the guilty party. At this point other voices chimed in, trying to calm the scared guy. I added my voice saying I was sorry I woke him up, but I have no interest whatsoever in getting out of my sleeping bag to kill anyone, unless they didn’t shut the heck up.

I met the lot of them in the morning. They were the quietest bunch of boy sprouts that I had ever run across. I’ve never seen a bunch of scouts all go to bed at dusk, but I guess they all had a tough day hiking. The Scoutmaster said the group was swapping ghost stories the night before. I can only imagine one of the guys saw my flashlight as I was setting up, and then drifted off into REM sleep and a nightmare.

Beautiful weather and Fall foliage for the remainder of the uneventful trip.

Thanks to Tuan the Clueless Ebay Seller’s failure to deliver, I was still in the market for a busted PDA with (hopefully) a good motherboard, so I can build myself a Frankenstein PDA.

Yea, I could just go buy a new one, but Palm sucks, they build overpriced crap with lousy warranties. They don’t make products for me, I want a PDA that’s built like a tank, has a two year, no questions asked warranty, and that superb repair exchange system that won me over to Palm in the first place. With a great warranty like that, I’m willing to pay $300-400, but with the service they give now, if I get a new PDA, I’ll have to buy two, just so I’m never without a spare.

Luckily, if all you really need is something to keep your contacts, appointment, and to-do list in, any of the m series (m100, m125) work just fine. The memory capacitor is usually dead, so you will have to hotsync before every battery change, but that’s only a minor nuisance. I do, however, really like my Zire’s ?James Bond? stealth camera, and I’m willing to do a little work to get it back.

I scored a cheap PDA on ebay, but the seller doesn’t accept Paypal. Now I use Paypal to pay small sums of money, but with all the Paypal horror stories out there, I blame no one for not accepting it. I had two realistic options, Bidpay, and a money order.

Now Bidpay would have been faster, but I just thought I’d get a 90 cent money order, and stick 60 cents on an envelope and be done with it. I’m in no hurry. Silly me.

The first problem was that the postal office wouldn’t take my credit card. It wasn’t my credit that was the problem, but the fact that I was trying to buy a money order with a credit card. Apparently there is a lot of fraud.

The second problem was that Shoppers Food Whorehouse, down the street, doesn’t accept credit cards for the purchase of a money order either.

Now both of these places will take debit cards, but not credit cards. Debit cards are a rotten deal for consumers for several reasons:

1. You don’t get the float (free loan of money) that you get with a credit cards.
2. You can’t contest a purchase, like you can with a credit card.
3. If the card is lost or stolen, someone can use it exactly like a credit card except that’s your money getting sucked out of your account.
4. The limit for liability on a debit card is $500 instead of $50 for credit cards. Frequently banks will wave even that.
5. If you are a member of the elite few who still realize that you are spending real money, and you don’t overspend on credit, and you pay your full balance off every month (I highly recommend auto-pay), you can actually earn money when you “flex” your cards. I get 1% off the top in cash every year for using my card. Try that with a debit card.

My standard practice is to not let my bank give me a debit card. Since I have good credit, I insist on a ATM card that is useless without the PIN if stolen.

So I had to run to the ATM, big deal. I get back in line at the Postal Monopoly and give the nice bureaucrat behind the counter my standard mischief line, “so, how many kinds of ID do I need for cash”?. I get my money order, and run smack dab into my third problem; The money order is worthless outside the United States, but my seller is located in our sister nation to the north, Canada. I don’t figure out this right away though, no, Standard Mischief has left the building first. That means I have to make a third trip to the Postal Monopoly.

Returning back a third time, I point out to the nice bureaucrat that NAFTA has passed, and my money order ought to be honored on the other side of the longest undefended border in the world. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way. You see, NAFTA is for corporations, and it lets those artificial person thingies (that have more rights than real people) move jobs and money overseas to avoid taxes and get the best rate on labor. It doesn’t do squat for ordinary people like you and me. The overlords get somewhere between a third and half of my income through taxes, fees, and miscellaneous BS, but obviously I’m not paying them enough for them to put any sugar in the Uber-Treaty for me.

So even though she sold me a defective product, she can’t or won’t let me return it. I’m forced to cash it, thereby losing my 90 cents, and this time buy the special orange money order (for only $3.25, what a bargain).

I’m gonna drop this thing in the mail and start to pray. I’ve just realized I’ve just given the ideal chance for two different nations’ Postal Monopoly an opportunity to royally screw up.

A Principal at a Catholic high school in Sparta, New Jersey has issued a new rule to students, No blogging allowed.

He claims “it’s for the children”. Gee, isn’t that line getting a little old?

Of course, the real reason is because such blogs are beyond the reach of school administrators.

I’m having trouble with even a private school punishing students for what they do in their off time from school. Punishing someone when they get to school because their homework is not finished is one thing, punishing them because they were critical of the teachers or other students is another.

I believe you are teaching censorship, and are discouraging creative thought from your students.

In Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier (1998), those supremes ruled that a school sponsored newspaper that was not actively promoted as a forum for student expression, could be censured. Civil libertarians suggested that students print their own paper, paid out of their own funds, to circumvent any censorship. Fast forward to today, when the cost of publishing on the web has dropped down to just student time and effort, and we see that some principals want to regulate that also.

According to the Record, some students had posted derogatory comments about the school in their online profiles. The paper quoted one parent, who had never heard of MySpace, praising the policy, saying that it fit with the reason she sent her kids to the private school. “They take the safety of the child into consideration first,” said Mary Kaye Nardone, mother of two Pope John students.

In other words, this clueless mother bought the “if it saves just one child” BS, hook, line, and sinker.

A constitutional law expert told the Record that a case could be made that the school added the new restriction after families had already signed a contract with the school for the year. “I think it’s a bad idea and I think it’s probably illegal - I think the students have some rights,” said Rutgers University Professor Frank Askin, director of the Constitutional Litigation Clinic. Askin said he was not aware of any similar case, but added that there is no clear First Amendment violation because the school is a private, not government, entity.

A very good point, but I think there are limits to what rights one or one’s parents could sign away in a contract.

I would like to suggest to those affected students that your standard mischief ought to be to start blogging anonymously. Be hypercritical of your school administration and its policies. Feel free to link back here, I’d be happy to promote and read your blog.

(via BlogsNow)

I am neutral on the Miers nomination

I can’t properly state that I understand the Judiciary completely.

I can’t understand why some cases can go in front of the court immediately and see verdicts immediately (like those flag burning test cases that had laws struck down within 48 hours) and some verdicts don’t get reported until the last possible moment (like the verdict in the “Gun-Free School Zones Act” United States v. Lopez (1995))

I don’t understand why those supremes would deny hearing an important case, dismissing it on procedural grounds, when it covers an important issue that needs to be addresses in the highest court. (Elk Grove v. Newdow) Isn’t that what we pay them for?

For that matter, if we oppose the government on a policy, like “material witness” indefinite imprisonment, why must we have standing before we can get a judgment? I’m surely not going to have the legal resources if I wait to file until after they have put me behind bars. If we oppose an unconstitutional gun law should we have to risk prison in order to challenge it?

I can’t see why we have the transparent overlord BS that is legalese. Court “pleadings” that “pray” for a resolution. You can shove that crap up your ex post facto.

I can’t fathom the logic a successful court judge must have. The judge must balance handing down suitable verdicts while not setting too many precedents. If a judge doesn’t hold “hot button issue” cards close to the chest, he or she will never be confirmed.

I don’t understand why we don’t impeach more judges when they don’t conform to a strict constitutional interpretation.

I don’t understand why we give judges the option to have such a easy retirement, “Senior status“, unless that’s a way to hand off the “hot button issue” cases to someone who isn’t gonna ever be a supreme.

I can’t support Miers. Even if people listened to me and Miers was rejected, we wouldn’t get a replacement that was anywhere near suitable either, so I can’t rightly oppose her. In this case neutral = indifferent.