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Comment: Re:It appears there's no additional sales tax. (Score 1) 212

by slew (#46491981) Attached to: Elon Musk Addresses New Jersey's Tesla Store Ban

However, keep in mind, if you actually live in NJ, you are essentially screwing over the state you live in, so it's not a clear cut win for you give your hard earned money to Pennsylvania (in your example).

You also have to benefit from that sales tax. My take is that New Jersey will miss your sales tax more than you will.

Not if they raise other tax rates to make up for lost revenue... One might think that some how paying tax is kind of like a multi-way prisoner's dilemma between other tax payers, but in reality, the government will get their money some other way, and on that other game (a different tax revenue source), you may be the loser...

If you are in the upper 50%, making sure state revenue comes from paying sales tax and sin taxes is a net win (because sin and sales taxes tends to be highly regressive), but if you are in the lower 50%, rooting for luxury taxes and higher state income tax instead of sin and sales tax is a better way to minimize your contribution to government. I suspect that someone considering buying a Tesla in another state would be in the upper 50% (just an assumption).


by slew (#46489043) Attached to: Elon Musk Addresses New Jersey's Tesla Store Ban

Actually, in many states, when you buy a car, you can get a out-of-state delivery rider on the sales contract and not pay sales tax in the state you buy the car in and just pay the use tax on the state that you intend to register/license the car in. This is often done to facilitate title transfer for car brokers (that don't register cars, but still need to transfer title and move cars interstate).

I did this with one car I bought out of state (to simplify the paperwork and still not pay sales tax twice). Of course if your goal is to screw-over NJ for not allowing a Tesla dealership, you would of course pay as much of the sales tax to another state. However, keep in mind, if you actually live in NJ, you are essentially screwing over the state you live in, so it's not a clear cut win for you give your hard earned money to Pennsylvania (in your example).

Comment: Re:Shooting themselves in the foot (Score 4, Interesting) 212

by slew (#46488945) Attached to: Elon Musk Addresses New Jersey's Tesla Store Ban

NY isn't the only state with a so-called exit tax.

One way that states apply an virtual exit tax is change the tax exemption status instead of pro-rating it. For example with property tax, such that if you leave the state, you end up paying a higher rate (e.g., lose the primary residence exemption on your property tax bill) vs if you moved within the same state you could pro-rate your exemption between 2 properties.

Another way is to have a separate rate for a transfer tax for non-residents (meaning it applies if you die or move). California was proposing this.

Another way is to blatantly add a surcharge (I think Yonkers has something like this)

Even if there isn't any actual tax liability, if you move out of the state, they will often chase you around claiming part of your income was derived from the state and you owe taxes on that amount. Say if you file your tax return from 2010-2012 in NY, then in 2013 you move say to Nevada and file a 2013 part year tax return for NY thinking you are in the clear for NY. Later in 2014 you only file federal taxes in Nevada, sometime in 2015 NY discovers that you never filed a NY state tax return for 2014, but the Feds got a 2014 return for you. They immediately send you a notice in the mail, that they have noted on your 2014 Federal Return that you had $X amount of adjusted gross income, and since you didn't file a NY tax return they "estimate" that $Y was earned in NY and as a out-of-state residence you should pay taxes on this amount (one theory they use is non-deductibility of state income tax for non-residents) . You can either fight this shake-down and show that none of the income was earned in NY, or just pay $Y.

Comment: Re:Yes! (Score 3, Informative) 212

by slew (#46488221) Attached to: Elon Musk Addresses New Jersey's Tesla Store Ban

There's a BBC doc somewhere about the factories in China that make the "real" branded sunglasses. It's a bunch of Chinese workers in a nondescript white room operating injection molding machines. Some guy calls out "Switch!" in Cantonese, the workers swap out the dies, and it's Guccis for the next two hours.

It's actually not hard to see why this is the case. What you see as many retail brands is really just a few companies...

Luxottica (which also owns Lens Crafters), Marchon (owned by VSP), and Safilo, plus a few smaller companies...

I think together the top three make up over 70% of the market.

Comment: Re:No Sympathy (Score 1) 258

by slew (#46480625) Attached to: Mt. Gox Knew It Was Selling Phantom Bitcoin 2 Weeks Before Collapse

Given the history of the banking industry in Japan in the past few decades, I don't know if you really want to put Japan up there as a model legal example.

The large number of technically insolvent japanese banks saddled with bad real-estate and business loan debt accumulating since the 1990's and the massive corruption of the government regulators of this industry to allow this debt to be "convoy-ed" from bank-to-bank might be a tiny red flag...

By the way, Mt Gox filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan AND the US (in an effort to stall all lawsuits dead in their tracks). Perhaps, you should be referencing the trappings of government where how fraudulent companies can protect themselves from the little-guys (rather than how the government might somehow be protecting the little-guy from fraudulent companies)...

If those behind Mt Gox committed fraud, they may very well be able to make one class action law firm or some bankruptcy-court-appointed-trustee very rich as a small consolation to those that lost money (in addition to that jail thing)...

Comment: Re:Dump Common Core (Score 1) 272

by slew (#46480311) Attached to: Is the New "Common Core SAT" Bill Gates' Doing?

I think many folks have a severe misunderstanding of the how common core is related to reading material presented to the students.

There is no "science-knowledge" common core material. In common core, science has been integrated entirely within language arts: basically learning the ability to take reading material covering a scientific topic and extract information from the reading material, not learn the subject.

The point is not to teach a12-year old the scientific topics of genetic counseling, meiosis, DNA, etc. It is not *knowledge* based learning, but learning the skills of how to extract facts from written material. At the 12-year old level, for scientific texts, common core wants students to be able to:

- quote accurately from a text
- identify 2 or more main ideas from a text and summarize how they are supported by details
- explain the relationship or interaction between 2 or more ideas in the text
- determine the meaning of common scientific words appropriate to grade level
- compare and contrast two texts on the same subject
- draw on multiple texts to find the answer to a question
- explain how the author uses certain evidence or reasoning to support a specific point
- be able to integrate information from multiple texts on the same topic in a writing or speaking exercise

Not surprisingly, these new "science" skills are difficult for students trained to study "topics" and "facts", or have advanced and/or extra-curricular knowledge of a topic from other sources (say a parent), but is a lazy reader or doesn't usually want to examine and/or integrate information from multiple sources (e.g., likes discovering facts from single-source resources like Wikipedia or other Encyclopedia-like authoritative-resource). The goal of common core is not to learn any specific scientific topics, but to teach students how to discover knowledge in a critical-learning way from multiple sources of information. Hopefully these will be useful skills regardless of the topic presented, but is a radical shift in the goal (and probably not well communicated or taught by teachers used to the old fact-based curriculum).

I suspect this is why far-left-leaning and far-right-leaning folks seem to be so dead-set against Common-Core. Training people to get information from multiple sources and identify what evidence they are using to support their point of view is tantamount to learning to think for themselves. You might see how this is really scary for political movements that depend on low-information voters who are expected to tow-the-line...

Don't fret if you child doesn't understand all the nuances of meiosis or DNA, or genetic counseling from reading the supplied texts. The point is for them to learn to be able to read the text and extract ideas, viewpoints, and the logical reasoning (or lack thereof) in the supplied texts. The facts and topics themselves in the reading material are just supposed to be relevant and timely, not canonical parts of a curriculum. Hopefully it will inspire them to do more learning on their own if the topics are interesting (which is why they are supposed to be relevant and timely).

Comment: Re:The nature of the Ponzi (Score 1) 258

by slew (#46477811) Attached to: Mt. Gox Knew It Was Selling Phantom Bitcoin 2 Weeks Before Collapse

False. The lawyers of the folks at the top also make money.

During a gold rush, it's better to be a seller of shovels. (e.g., Mt Gox)
After a gold rush, there's usually no money to pay the lawyers for the seller of said shovels...

On the other hand, the lawyers for the 90% on the bottom get paid handsomely.

As an example, the Bernie Madoff case. Irving Picard's law firm (appointed by the bankruptcy court to recover assets in the Madoff case), will probably gross about $900M for their efforts, where Ira Sorkin, the lawyer for Bernie Madoff, only got paid peanuts in comparison (estimated to be around $250K).

Some accounts would suggest that Ira Sorkin may simply be paying back some previous "debt" (since his family was once a client of Madoff's although they closed out their account long before the Ponzi scheme was unveiled). However, by most accounts, he was merely "phoning-it-in" during the legal proceedings (probably just putting up enough effort for the sake of future business).

Comment: Re:The problem with the education system (Score 1) 272

by slew (#46477041) Attached to: Is the New "Common Core SAT" Bill Gates' Doing?

I takes more than vision and courage. It takes changing some of the underlying goals.

1. People that normally exit the system (graduate) should have a marketable set of skills and knowledge. (economic goal)
2. Everyone should have access to the same learning opportunities. (equality goal)
3. A majority of people will exit the system at approximately the same age. (social stability goal)

I think any real change will require removing all three of these goals. I don't think it is politically viable to remove any of them and still have system that would be likely fundable by the government. All the vision, courage and studying how children learn won't change that.

Comment: Re:Dump Common Core (Score 1) 272

by slew (#46476861) Attached to: Is the New "Common Core SAT" Bill Gates' Doing?

Interesting rant... So you kid used to be on the honor roll and student of the month, and now he's not. So you want to raise your kid's self esteem yet when things are over their head, you think it makes them feel stupid?

Can we all have honor students? Is it always possible "smart" people to be in a situation where always know what's going on? Is it possible that parents are making kids feel stupid by overly high expectations?

Perhaps raising robust kids that don't always know the answer, or need to have constant pats on the back, but have enough self drive to survive that situation is what we should really be teaching in the primary school years. Is memorizing the times table, or dumbing down the curriculum so that the top N% of the students are unchallenged so they can have high self esteem performing some effectively meaningless exercise something even worth striving for?

Maybe that is something to think about...

Comment: Re:problems (Score 1) 272

by slew (#46476671) Attached to: Is the New "Common Core SAT" Bill Gates' Doing?

Disclaimer: I'm a college-application anarchist who thinks all admissions departments should be taken out and shot, and applicants selected using the time-honored Staircase Method.

Well, that says a lot right there. However, the SAT is a useful assessment tool similar to the staircase method or simply admitting alphabetically by middle name.

Generic colleges need to sort their applicants somehow and desire a CYA from discrimination lawsuits, SAT is a good place holder...

Selective colleges pretty much ignore SATs anyhow, except that if you can't be bothered to take the test and score reasonably well relative to the average joe (or jane), you probably won't be bothered to graduate on time either, so they will probably look the other way on your application... Almost all selective colleges primarily look at are weighted GPA (underwater basketweaving 'A's don't really count), and extra curricular activities. Most use the SAT as a threshold thing (if you score above some threshold that pretty much puts you in the heavyweight staircase category for that criteria, if you score below some threshold, you are a lightweight and better have some other area where you can add some weight).

On the other hand, having worked with undergrad admission departments in the past, I can say, that they can already be somewhat characterized by anarchy and various people going rogue, so I don't know what you hope to gain by taking them out ;^)

Comment: Re:Becuz (Score 1) 272

by slew (#46475609) Attached to: Is the New "Common Core SAT" Bill Gates' Doing?

The problem being that Common Core is a step *away* from universal literacy.

Really? Putting aside on how you would actually create tests to assess reaching Common Core goals, what about the Common Core do you object to? Or is it simply a objection to any and all standardized testing (regardless of the material)?



Comment: Re:None of that is Crimea (Score 1) 496

by slew (#46459519) Attached to: Ukraine May Have To Rearm With Nuclear Weapons Says Ukrainian MP

Yes and no. AFAICT, much of the Ukrainian missile tech development is apparently in Kiev, Dniepropetrovsk and Pavlograd.

Although Kiev is certainly quite a distance away from Donetsk area (probably the most "Russian" part of Ukraine), the other two location(s) are very nearby and under quite a bit of influence from Russia.

One big problem for Ukraine with this move by Russia is that it tends to promote a situation where the core of Ukraine (around Kiev) morphs into a land-locked state that needs to negotiate with Russia for access Black sea. This is trending to be a sequel of the "russia-wants-a-warm-water-port" meme from the pre-cold-war times...

Comment: Re:Really? (Score 2) 153

Research laboratories are exempt from OSHA regulations.

That is not true.

AFAIK, Academic or Industry Lab makes no difference, all research labs are treated the same by OSHA lab regulations. Labs that solely do Quality Assessment/Control procedures for production facilities are the only labs exempt from OSHA lab regulations. Even labs that do environmental testing, or say simple blood testing are covered by OSHA lab regulations. The exemption is really strict, so basically no research or general analysis can be done in the lab.

Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU. -- Mt.