Against the SOPA & PIPA Goliaths

I wrote this to my home town newspaper January 19, 2012.  I’ll let you know if they print it.

To the editor:

Many of your readers will remember that in 2008-2009 I was sued for $2 million by the Microsoft Corporation and you ran it as a banner headline above the fold.  When I won the case you ran it on page three near the bottom.

I have since written a book to be published soon and opened a website and blog www.againstgoliath.com that I hope you and your readers will read from time to time.

But I am writing today about the SOPA and PIPA laws before our broken United States Congress.  Fairness will never play a part in whether or not these laws will pass, but I can tell you from bitter experience that the One Percent with power in this country, those I call Goliath, do not need more teeth to exploit and destroy the little guy with a web site.

It took a year before Microsoft even had to show that I had broken any copyright law after accusing me.  When they couldn’t show such a thing ever happened they decided to try to settle.  All the details are on my web site.  With our systems of nonsensical laws no one ever needs to show wrong doing before accusing publicly and in print.  And they never have to answer for their clearly wrong and harmful actions.

What SOPA and PIPA give them is the ability to put people out of business while the courts decide whether or not any law has been broken.  We all know that can take decades.

And all of ourConnecticutmembers of Congress are probably in favor of these stupid, redundant, and anti – First Amendment laws.  According to watchdog web sites they have all received significant contributions from Goliaths who want these new laws.  Blumenthal, Lieberman and Larson are co-sponsors of the bills and have received millions in contributions for their sponsorship.  The rest are in question, but they too have received millions from pro-Goliath groups.

Without your interest or help we will see many big changes in how you use the internet.   I left email with all my Congress people and spoke with a representative of Chris Murphy’s office and gave him an earful.  Murphy was the only member of Congress available.  He received $900k in contributions from SOPA and PIPA supporters and $150k from anti censorship groups according to the watchdogs.  How do you think he will vote?

Copyright Kent Johnson 2012

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Stupid laws

I am not talking about stupid laws that were just left on the books forever,  like laws that require someone to walk in front of a car from over a hundred years ago.  These are real laws that cost tax payer money for no benefit to anyone except the federal employees who enforce them and the Congressmen who wrote them, and the lawyers who haggle over them for a living.

The best thing about laws is that so many of them are not enforced.  There is no shortage of stupid laws.  I will post links  here. http://www.dumblaws.com/   For example in my state:  You can be stopped by the police for biking over 65 miles per hour. In order for a pickle to officially be considered a pickle, it must bounce. It is illegal to dispose of used razor blades. You cannot buy any alcohol after 9pm or on Sundays after noon on Sunday. It is illegal to discharge a firearm from a public highway….  It goes on and on.

But the stupid laws I am talking about are the every day laws we have in America.  Anti drug laws, seatbelt laws, anti texting  laws….  I mean we don’t need to tell people drugs are bad do we?  If so, isn’t putting them in jail enough?  Do we need ad campaigns on every radio station and TV station and bilboards…  All paid for by, well, who else?

And no one will argue that seat belts are a bad thing.  Certainly texting while driving is as distracting as, say, having five children fighting in the back seat.  But we aren’t going outlaw the children, are we?  How about just saying we can’t drive distracted and leave it at that?  Do we need to list all the possible distractions with different punishments for each kind?  Do we need constant barage of ads like with the drugs?

How much do you think the seat belt laws cost the tax payer?  Just the radio and television ads should be enough, but that cost isn’t the cost of the law.  The cost of the law is the cost of all the politicians, lawyers and federal employees who get paid writing, revising, arguing, defending, prosecuting and regulating .   Couldn’t we just all agree seatbelts are good and make a single law against stupid behavior and move on?  How many people make a good part of their living on seat belt laws?  How many lives would we save if we just enforced the seatbelt laws with all the other traffic laws and left the rest of the seatbelt industrial complex alone?

I don’t think anyone alive thinks our income tax system is a good system.  I don’t think many people would even say  it is a better tax system than any other country, unless it is compared with a lack of a system at all.  The only thing worse than our system would be a corrupt system.  Ours isn’t overtly corrupt, it is just stupid.   Although it is corrupt in many ways as well as the rest of our stupid governmental system of laws.   The only ones who profit from our tax system are, again, government employees, those who write the laws, and the lawyers.   Well, in the case of taxes there is an entire industry vested in being sure it remains complicated, headed by HR Block and the like.

Don’t get me wrong, personally it is good for me that the system is incomprehensible.  20 years or so ago I was audited and learned how the system works, and the complexity works for my advantage now.  Having my own business and property give me a wealth of things to spend money on instead of giving it to Uncle Sam.  It is competely legal, or at least entirely defensible in an audit, but if it weren’t for the tax structure we have I would definitly spend my money differently.  And I don’t think the things I get tax deductions for buy profit anyone that needs particularly needs to profit.

I mean, the charity deduction is not one that I over use.  I suppose I could and people would benefit.  I certainly benefit from deductions for paying my mortgage.  And being over extended in that way, the way many Americans are at this time, assures that I don’t pay very much in taxes, using all those deductions.

So why is there a deduction for charity, for paying a mortgage, for insulating a house?  Who does it help if I insulate my house?  Me, of course.  So why does the government want to give me incentive to help myself?

The human animal has to try to make sense of nonsense.  The reasons our tax codes are so strange is, well, there really is not reason.  They are unreasonable.     The laws probably have history and explanation, but the point is that the industries that profit from complicated taxes want taxes complicates.  Politicians, federal employees, lawyers,  and a whole industry of accountants and tax professionals benefit from shuffling money.  They don’t add wealth to the country, they just help shuffle it from one national pocket into another.  This is one example of trickle down that works a little bit, because the richer people probably spend more doing their taxes than poorer people do.  But I don’t think many people argue that the rich pay their fair share of taxes.  Everyone knows that working middle class pays almost everything.  It just comes out of the paycheck.

I knew a guy who got a doctor’s degree in chocolate.  He knew a lot about chocolate.  It seems to me there should be more to know about chocolate than taxes.  But the opposite is true. Thousands more  more people have doctorates in disciplines and studies that keep up with the US tax issues than chocolate, I am sure.  

Copyright 2011 Kent Johnson

 

 

 

 

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Immigration

The only people who benefit from American Immigration laws are politicians, lawyers, and Federal Employees.

The politicians live off the tax payers and so they write and support and dispute these strange and unreasonable laws and purposefully make the issues complex.  The lawyers bill innocent and guilty alike for hours of time trying to follow the strange and unreasonable laws.  And Federal employees from border guards and clerks to judges and prison officials earn their living from the taxpayer due to these nonsensical laws.

What is the benefit to the taxpayer? How much money would the tax payer save if the  immigration laws made sense?

It is very easy to think of several ways to fix the system.  The idea is to keep undesirables and huge numbers of people out of America, right?  But the system we have now is not doing that.  The system is broken and no one in government wants to fix it.   The system won’t change because politicians, lawyers and federal employees profit from the complexity.

We need to regulate the people who come into this country, of course.  But the system we have makes no sense in so many ways I would have to write a book to show its idiocy.  For example, no one who entered the country illegally and stays more than a year (some say there are up to 20 million such people) can stay legally.  They have to leave and wait ten years to come back, with no assurances they can come back even after waiting ten years.  So we have this vast population that lives here for decades that has no chance of becoming “legal”.

No simple working system can be accepted because the One Percent in power, lawyers and politicians, profit from the complexity and the impossibility of the system.  If they agreed they  couldn’t justify their jobs.  In essence, their job is to make sure the government stays broken.

You want a simple example of how to  solve the huge problem of illegals?  Fine the hell out of the illegals but give them a path to citizenship.  If they could stay legally they would pay pretty much any amount of money.  It isn’t amnesty if they pay their fine.  The law that exists now does not allow up to ten percent of the population to be legal.  If they could pay a fine, well, that isn’t amnesty unless you get amnesty when you pay a speeding ticket.

Most of us do not know that a border crossing infraction is punishable by a fine of $90-$250, like a traffic violation. But is it fair to call those who travel 56 in a 55 zone “illegal” drivers?  Is it fair to say that a child of a lawbreaker is “illegal” due only to the country they live in?  The word “undocumented” certainly is a better word in the case of Dreamers who never broke any immigration law.

Connecticut passed a law allowing students who graduated Connecticut High Schools in-state tuition in Connecticut colleges. This certainly would be a non-issue except that most people label these Connecticut students “illegals”. What we don’t know about immigration is staggering.

Tens of thousands of High School students in every state have no idea they are illegal immigrants. Typically they find out when they want to get a job or a driver’s license that they do not have a social security number. They cannot join the military and they have no recourse to become “legal” other than marriage with an American.  And even that may not be an option for them if they arrived in this country “unexamined” or without a visa.

About half of all undocumented or “illegal” immigrants entered the country legally but overstayed their visas. 58%  are Mexican nationals and the new border security has made it much more difficult for people to cross our Mexican border. Ironically that has increased the likelihood that an illegal resident will remain here undocumented rather than return to their home country knowing how difficult it will be to return.

Undocumented children, when they reach age 16 or so feel as American as I am, having gone through our school system. But they are not eligible for loans or grants for College or until now in-state tuition in Connecticut. All of them know a lot more about this country and the English language than the country and language of their citizenship. But here they can’t work or drive legally, or enter our military. College is usually out of the question as well unless they can pay full tuition in cash.

Most college age students are idealistic and many stand up and declare publicly they are “dreamers” because of their hope that The Dream Act, an immigration bill that passed Congress but not the Senate (mainly due to efforts from Senator John McCain) will one day allow them a path to citizenship. Declaring oneself a Dreamer is a courageous act, obviously, because their immigration status makes them “illegal” ostracizing them and putting their families in danger of deportation. But they probably have never broken any law, and certainly have broken no immigration law.

You probably think these people can now just “do it the right way” and apply for citizenship. Nope. According to US immigration law, the only way to become legal is to return to their country of citizenship, wait ten years and apply for a return visa.  Many of them are illegal because they could not obtain a visa in the first place. Immigration should be difficult, but under present laws for 20 million US residents it is just impossible..

The laws affect the lives of the equivalent of the entire populations of New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago combined. But we all know these laws are not likely to change. It is a huge industry and it is not in the best interest of those politicians, lawyers and federal employess who  administer the nonsense to change the laws.  The U.S. Congress is frozen, unmovable. And until the laws change there will be no change in the situation of these immigrants.

At least now Dreamers caught the same break as their classmates in Connecticut High Schools, though they will still have to pay cash.

Copyright 2012 Kent Johnson

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Occupy & Tea Party are Agreed

It seems all of America is agreed that elitism and misdirection, if not malice, has brought to our government to a standstill.  Arcane and anticompetitve laws need to change so that the government and the people can get back to work.  What needs to work is the government, and the first order of business is to fix a broken Congress.

The system we have now  is bought and paid for by business and industry that keeps politicians rich and taxpayers poor.  The only beneficiaries of our system are those who add nothing to the economy: politicians, government employees, and lawyers.  These people produce nothing for the country, but redistribute wealth from the taxpayer mainly to the top one percent. It is in the interest of the 99% to simplify and bring reason to this pump that takes money and moves it up to the rich, via laws bought by the rich leaving us sold out by our government.  No one thinks it makes sense to run things the way we run things, but resistance to rational choices come from the One Percent and the Government who get rich on the system.

The disparity of wealth that exists between the One Percent and the other 99% is supported by an arcane system of laws that assures no member of Congress will ever need to spend his/her own money, and that each member of Congress will enrich her/himself  from the moment of election for the rest of his/her life.  And no one denies that all the money for the stituation come, directly or indirectly, at the tax payer’s expense. Congress directly costs the taxpayers about $3 billion a year, and most of that is not in salaries but in benefits.  Do the math for 539 congressmen and that is about $5.5 million per congressman per year.   But the indirect cost is much higher.  Just think why it takes five years to break ground on a public building and you get an alphabet of reasons: DEP, EPA, DOA, DOJ, HUD, Labor, anyone who is doing their Federal job will draw their salary from certifying that everything is done according to an impossible maze of laws.  Our system is supported by the impossible.  Then all the added costs to support the certification by government are pumped up to the large corporations who pay the workers a little, but fill up the campaign coffers of Congressmen to insure nothing changes.

Taxpayer disgust is clear and Tea Party and Occupy activists are purposefully confused by government and journalists who do governement work.  Understanding the issues is deliberately confused by those who make their living from our government.  It does not serve the purposes of the Government or the One Percent if we can clearly see how our money is spent.  But it is clear the money is spent without any improvement to our quality of life, but only to the quality of life of those who make their living in the politics industries.

Simply put this can stop if and when the 99% gets transparency to their government.  Only when we can accept the fact that we all want our government be simplified, except of course the Government and lawyers.  We know  the laws we live with cost us much more than just our time, frustration and taxes.  They also make our economic progress more difficult for no good reason.

When the cost of government is put in terms we can understand, like the cost of the seat belt laws, the cost of food regulation, the cost of drug enforcement, the cost of immigration….  When those costs add up to the total paid by taxpayers and we can see what it is we are paying for the Tea Partyists and the Occupy movement will have no complaints.  We will see what needs to change.

As it is everything is based upon impossible situations.  And the most impossible situation is Congress.  Yes, the whole of our US governement  profits from the fact Congress has created the impossible.  And the taxpayers must pay for the impossible, eventually.

Every time new laws pass to attempt to protect or somehow help a sector of our population no one profits but those who make the laws and those who make their living checking to see the laws are followed.  Perhaps those sectors of the population are helped, but at a hidden and increasingly impossible cost to the taxpayers.  And we all pay every cent of the salaries of those who make, enforce, and dispute those laws.

A man in my town posted a video on YouTube of him shooting a deer on his own property.  He had the correct licenses and did everything legal, except he did not report the hunt to our authorities as required by law.  Who benefits from his $2500 fine and jail time?  Why do we have such dear price to pay to keep the correct count of hunted deer in this area?  I am glad the government gets his money instead of mine this time, but I am sure that $2500 fine is hardly enough to pay for the system we have that “caught” this law breaker.  The number of people who make their living counting hunted deer can hardly be paid with $2500.  They need taxpayer money.

This is a complicated issue, but what is easy to see is that the system is not working.  What should happen is Congress makes a law to help someone or fix a problem.  Taxpayers pay for the law and its costs.  But what happens is the costs are hidden in the complexities of overburdening and impossible to follow laws.  One of the best things about our system of laws is that so many of them are not enforced.  But when they are enforced, we are all lawbreakers.  And ignorance of the law is no excuse.

 

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Against Goliath – Read the first chapter of the book

Read the first chapter of my book “Against Goliath” here:

Against Goliath – Chapter One

It is a book which documents the abuses Microsoft made of our justice system in order to sue me for $2,000,000 even though I had broken no laws.  This is a perfect example of the actions of the “One Percent” the Occupy movement protests, and the governmental abuses the Tea Party movement seeks to change.

In the days and weeks to follow I will be updating the site with more information about my suit, other suits Microsoft greedily pursued against others, how to buy the book and ways to organize and let people know that you stand against big lawyers and big buisness bullying the US Government and its people.

Microsoft uses its money to buy political representation and laws that are expensive to the American taxpayer.  More examples to follow, but in my case the arcane manner in which I was bullied can only serve the lawyer class of people and costs the tax payer.  No laws were broken, but Microsoft demanded $2 million.  The laws did not dictate that Microsoft needed to tell me what I was specifically accused of doing, beyond “copyright enfringement” until after they had a chance to go through all of my business records nearly a year after making baseless accusations.

The stupidity and needless expenses brought to us by our justice system is only one of many parts of our stupid and expensive governmental systems.  More examples will be arriving shortly.  The ones who gain are the Perkins Coi lawyers and the ones who lose are the American taxpayers, and those bullied by Microsoft and their ilk.

Leave a message on this site, please.

Copyright Kent Johnson 2012

 

 

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