Not a single "Stack overflow" pun?
Anti-IRS Rant of Software Engineer who Today Flew Plane into IRS Building
201–210 of 218 posts
Re: Anti-IRS Rant of Software Engineer who Today Flew Plane into IRS Building
#202The Department of Homeland Security released a statement calling this a criminal act, not terrorism. I am confused. A few years ago everything was considered terrorism and now nothing is. This guy wasn't targeting individual people in the IRS, he was targeting the whole establishment. This is akin to the Oklahoma City bombing. If that was a terrorist incident and 9/11 was a terrorist incident, this is too. He even ha…
I tend to agree with the cynic in me that says it's because the guy's name was "Joe Stack". Had it been Mohammed something then it would've been terrorism.
yep. The mentality is that we are in a war against terrorism, most people understand you cannot actually attack terrorism so when you say "war against terror" most people really think "war against angry foreign influenced Muslims". If someone who isn't a angry Muslim commits a crime that invokes Terror (flying planes into buildings) it isn't terrorism.
Re: Anti-IRS Rant of Software Engineer who Today Flew Plane into IRS Building
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say smart, disgruntled people aren't as smart as they think they are. The societal problem is convincing everyone that they're a genius. When life hands them less than the best and they have to overcome it, they just get disgruntled, because "they're too smart" to deal with it. Parents, remind your children that there's always going to be someone smarter/faster/stronger/etc than them, and that they should focus o…
> there's always going to be someone smarter/faster/stronger/etc than them However in this country (the US) the gaps are wider and the deck is stacked more than in any other industrialized nation in pretty much every category.
Don't pretend America is the worst nation in the world. A lot of people want to go there because it's better than where they came from.
Try complaining against the state in an industrialized nation like China.
Re: Anti-IRS Rant of Software Engineer who Today Flew Plane into IRS Building
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
"He says that he wants his act of violence to initiate change - I assume in the IRS specifically, but also in American politics in general. That's the definition of terrorism." Tell that to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington...
Terrorism is a strategy not a sin, just because you happen to agree with what they are saying does not mean they are not terrorist's. Also you don't need actually kill people to induce fear, setting fire to an empty building can also count.
I agree in principle, but that's not how society defines it. By popular definition, a terrorist is someone who commits atrocities for a cause that one does not agree with. If there was agreement, they'd be labeled a "freedom fighter" or something like that.
Re: Anti-IRS Rant of Software Engineer who Today Flew Plane into IRS Building
#205The site was pulled down, here's the copy of the rant: If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Why did this have to happen?” The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time. The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in the face of the looming realization that there isn’t enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken. Need…
If you can't live with the IRS or other parts of the US system, there are 194 other countries out there. Many of them are good places for English speakers to live and work. Vote with your feet, not with violence against helpless government workers.
Unfortunately that solution doesn't work so well in practice. The United States is one of the few countries in the world to tax income earned by US citizens in other countries. (The only other ones of which I am aware are North Korea and, while it was in existence, the Soviet Union.)
Furthermore, any US citizen who decides to renounce his or her citizenship is assumed to have expatriated for tax reasons if the tax liability is over $127,000 or the individual's net worth is at least $2 million. (Though those, of course, are not the only reasons that an individual will be assumed to have expatriated for tax purposes.) An individual who has expatriated for tax reasons must pay US taxes on all US-derived income for 10 years and if the individual returns to the US for 30 days in those ten years, all income earned abroad is taxable by the US government. If such an individual has the misfortune of dying during any year in which he or she spent at least 30 days in the US, the entire estate is taxable by the US government.
I'm not sure Stack's tax liability was $127,000, but given his problems with the IRS, I wouldn't be surprised if the IRS would have declared him expatriated for tax reasons had he tried to leave the country. Escaping the long arm of the IRS can be easier said than done.
Re: Anti-IRS Rant of Software Engineer who Today Flew Plane into IRS Building
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you can't live with the IRS or other parts of the US system, there are 194 other countries out there. Many of them are good places for English speakers to live and work. Vote with your feet, not with violence against helpless government workers.
easy to say, not so easy to do. for an american to legally live and work in another country is not trivial unless you have citizenship in that country. trust me, i would have been out of here years ago if it were less complicated.
Errrrmmm. If you're an American with a degree, it's pretty trivial. It's certainly trivial when compared to what people have to go through to get into the US.
I know a lot of people who have relocated to NL (me), UK, DE, or FR.
1. Americans can travel freely to most countries in Europe, for business or vacation, no visa required. Once there, you can go on job interviews, and firms with many internationals will have no problem arranging a work visa for you. Alternatively, you can arrange the work visa yourself, which is also pretty easy.
2. Many countries (Holland, for example) have agreements that American entrepreneurs can start their own businesses. You just have to show that you will not be a drain on society (i.e. you buy health insurance and have some money in the bank), and that you will be making a 'substantial investment' in your company (usually less than $10k)
3. I studied here, a one-year M.Sc. (which cost less than $15k and was of a surprisingly high quality), and they gave me a green card for a "job-seeking-year", during which I can work anywhere... but have switch my visa to a normal work permit before it expires. It took me 5 days from getting the permit to switching it to a regular permit.
4. Or you can just find a foreign partner, you don't even need to marry them in some countries. Sometimes that's enough, other times they need to show that they earn enough to take care of you both (in case you can't find work), but the threshold is so low it's a joke ($30-35k yearly salary).
Bad news is: Americans living abroad still have to pay US-income tax, if you make a lot of money. You'll have to stay in your new home for a while and get citizenship (5+ years), renounce your US citizenship, and even then they can come after you for a while...
I know so many US expats over here, and only a few have had visa-related issues (all resolved well). Most of those were because someone didn't do their homework, or didn't take it seriously. All of them pale in comparison to the visa-issue that I've heard from expats living in the US.
Re: Anti-IRS Rant of Software Engineer who Today Flew Plane into IRS Building
#207The site was pulled down, here's the copy of the rant: If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Why did this have to happen?” The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time. The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in the face of the looming realization that there isn’t enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken. Need…
I really respect this guy. Once you realize your life is over, you might as well take a few other people with you.
Can I invoke Poe's Rule on this statement?
Re: Anti-IRS Rant of Software Engineer who Today Flew Plane into IRS Building
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
> there's always going to be someone smarter/faster/stronger/etc than them However in this country (the US) the gaps are wider and the deck is stacked more than in any other industrialized nation in pretty much every category.
Don't pretend America is the worst nation in the world. A lot of people want to go there because it's better than where they came from. Try complaining against the state in an industrialized nation like China.
Why don't we hear more about people flying planes into buildings in China? Or students (or even teachers!) losing it and shooting up their schools?
Is it just that they have better control of their media (so we don't hear about it), better control of the people (so they don't get a chance to do it), or something else?
Re: Anti-IRS Rant of Software Engineer who Today Flew Plane into IRS Building
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's just a bug in our design as humans, IMO, but it's that same bug which allows us to occasionally do monumentally amazing things. It just depends how you spin your perceptions to yourself, I suppose, and if you can accept that greatness is, more or less, a large scale way of turning a frown upside down. :)
Whatever it is in a culture that leads desperate people to decide to kill strangers before commiting suicide has far more to do with the culture than with human DNA.
Culture is a byproduct of humanity and therefore it's quirks are a reflection of our quirks.
Re: Anti-IRS Rant of Software Engineer who Today Flew Plane into IRS Building
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't pretend America is the worst nation in the world. A lot of people want to go there because it's better than where they came from. Try complaining against the state in an industrialized nation like China.
Why don't we hear more about people flying planes into buildings in China? Or students (or even teachers!) losing it and shooting up their schools? Is it just that they have better control of their media (so we don't hear about it), better control of the people (so they don't get a chance to do it), or something else?
Less guns per citizens (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_gun_owners...) and less access to planes?
By the way, there were also some incidence of pupils shooting up their schools in recent years in Germany. I guess you are just much more exposed to American incidents than to the rest of the world. (E.g. have you heard of the whole ugly neo-nazi stuff in east Germany in the 90ies? It still goes on, though at a much lower level of intensity. It's quite hard to find English language sources on the anti-asylum-seekers riots in Hoyerswerda in 1991 but http://www.jstor.org/pss/4146935 is on.)