Texas plane crash, embittered pilot vs. the IRS (1 Viewer)

[RickER]

Originally Posted by Will_B




True. Yet they shouldn't. Being un-clouded is a first principle in reporting, isn't it? I can understand the public muddling it all up together, but ...well I guess reporters aren't very good any more. Still, did V for Vendetta teach us nothing?

TV reporters, local and national, mostly want you to watch so they can sell you bread, and cars. The actual news part really is secondary. Just like any other "show" on TV.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Originally Posted by Will_B

True. Yet they shouldn't. Being un-clouded is a first principle in reporting, isn't it? I can understand the public muddling it all up together, but ...well I guess reporters aren't very good any more. Still, did V for Vendetta teach us nothing?

There are other considerations. Most news agencies make it a policy not to air the specific grievances of people who commit horrendous acts like this. His life was troubled and he had a grudge against the IRS, that's all that is really newsworthy. If the media devoted a lot of time to exploring his manifesto, it would only encourage others on the edge to commit atrocities in order to get their messages out there. This principle is why NBC took so much heat for airing excerpts from the video Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, had mailed to them.

 

[Will_B]

Originally Posted by Adam Lenhardt


There are other considerations. Most news agencies make it a policy not to air the specific grievances of people who commit horrendous acts like this. His life was troubled and he had a grudge against the IRS, that's all that is really newsworthy. If the media devoted a lot of time to exploring his manifesto, it would only encourage others on the edge to commit atrocities in order to get their messages out there. This principle is why NBC took so much heat for airing excerpts from the video Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, had mailed to them.

I had not thought of that, Adam. That is an excellent point. It also explains why we (in America) haven't been told why 9/11 happened, for example. (I mean beyond the "because they hate our freedom" line that I don't think we were meant to believe was a literal summary of the grievance.)

I guess it is not so important that the public ever know why something happened -- but someone must. Maybe politicians should be told? But the problem then is, what if the problem being pointed out was ABOUT the politicians?

I don't know... it's a difficult problem.

I think the V.Tech video was quite different though -- the kid was mentally disturbed. There was no point being made. Only ego gratification.

But who would make that call? I guess the senior editor of the newsroom would have to decide quickly whether a person was making a political point -- which should be aired, since it is every citizens' responsibility to be aware of matters affecting their country, imo -- or was doing something personal. And I guess that would be difficult to determine on the fly.

 

[Chris Lockwood]

Originally Posted by Will_B

Some news outlets describe the essay as a "rant", and some as "rambling". Some as a "rambling rant". Yet it was not!

I haven't read the thing, but I heard at least one reporter say he was calling it a rant because the statement referred to itself as a rant. Is that not the case?

 

[cafink]

That's correct, Chris. Stack's statement contains the following sentence: "Needless to say, this rant could fill volumes with example after example if I would let it."

 

[Will_B]

Yeah, but that doesn't make it a rant - that's like saying that this forum is "a wild, swinging party."

 

[Sam Posten]

Re: my comments on the plane. What's the cheapest a 4 seater plane can be had for? Isn't it in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, wayyyyy above the range of an SUV?

Sam

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Depends if you buy new or not. From New Jersey Craigslist:
Vintage Airplane for Sale - $23000 (Upper East Side)
Navion 1946 North American Airplane located at Solberg Airport - $14000 (Readington / Whitehouse Station NJ)
1964 Cessna Skyhawk 172E - $17000 (Miller Air Park (MJX), New Jersey)

 

[Chris Lockwood]

Originally Posted by Sam Posten

Re: my comments on the plane. What's the cheapest a 4 seater plane can be had for? Isn't it in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, wayyyyy above the range of an SUV?

Sam

You would only need to pay 6 figures if you wanted a new one. As noted above many are priced in the same range as cars, or less.

 

[Edwin-S]

Originally Posted by Sam Posten

Re: my comments on the plane. What's the cheapest a 4 seater plane can be had for? Isn't it in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, wayyyyy above the range of an SUV?

Sam

The price range for the type of aircraft this fellow owned (assuming it was a 180HP model) seems to be between a low of 25000 US to a high of 53000 US. Prices could go higher, but the twenty four PA28 180s I looked at were in that range. Price would depend on age of the aircraft plus other factors. The aircraft I looked at ranged from 1963 to 1973 models.

 

[Michael Reuben]

Originally Posted by Will_B The New York Times was one of the very few papers to state that his argument was actually materially correct in many respects: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/us/19tax.html

The NYT article said no such thing. It was limited to a history of sec. 1706 of the tax code, which has been an issue for many professionals, especially software engineers. While sec. 1706 occupied a significant place in Stack's last posting, it was by no means the only target of his anger. He identified many sources for his problems. Indeed, the role of sec. 1706 was limited to his time in California. Once he moved to Austin to start over, it was no longer mentioned. His problems in Austin stemmed from elsewhere. Here it is in his own words; people can decide for themselves whether the style sounds like a "rant":

By this time, I’m thinking that it might be good for a change. Bye to California, I’ll try Austin for a while. So I moved, only to find out that this is a place with a highly inflated sense of self-importance and where damn little real engineering work is done. I’ve never experienced such a hard time finding work. The rates are 1/3 of what I was earning before the crash, because pay rates here are fixed by the three or four large companies in the area who are in collusion to drive down prices and wages… and this happens because the justice department is all on the take and doesn’t give a fuck about serving anyone or anything but themselves and their rich buddies.

http://www.t35.com/embeddedart.txt

 

[Patrick_S]

I read his final post and I think the classifications of it as a rambling rant are accurate.
It all most felt like something you would expect from the main character of Dostoyevsky’s Notes From The Underground. Also, the comments that the media have not gone into depth about for the motives of the 9/11 terrorists are way off base.

 

[Chris Lockwood]

Originally Posted by Michael Reuben

The NYT article said no such thing. It was limited to a history of sec. 1706 of the tax code, which has been an issue for many professionals, especially software engineers.

The funny thing is that what the NYT said wasn't accurate, but then that is par for the course. I've worked in that industry as a self-employed person, and there was no issue since I formed a corporation and my corp billed the client for my time. That makes it harder for the IRS to claim the person is an employee of the client when they clearly are not.

Even if the Times interpretation was right, it seems the issue should be with how the law is written, not how the IRS enforces it.

 

[Michael Reuben]

Originally Posted by Chris Lockwood




The funny thing is that what the NYT said wasn't accurate, but then that is par for the course. I've worked in that industry as a self-employed person, and there was no issue since I formed a corporation and my corp billed the client for my time. That makes it harder for the IRS to claim the person is an employee of the client when they clearly are not.

If it were that simple, there would never have been an issue. The damnable thing about the 1986 amendment represented by sec. 1706 was that it permitted the IRS to question even such formal separations, thereby throwing into doubt all sorts of contractual arrangments on which people had relied. You were lucky. Other people weren't so fortunate, and apparently Stack was one of them. (This is assuming, of course, that Stack's account can be taken at face value. Some reports have suggested that he was a dyed-in-the-wool tax protester, and if it hadn't been 1706, he'd have been objecting to some other provision.)

This isn't the place to get into an extensive discussion of tax law, which is both complicated and boring, but Harvey Shulman, who is the principal source for the NYT article, is a long-time expert on 1706, has testifed before Congress on its impact, and wrote an editorial on the statutory mess shortly after Stack's death. Unless the paper misquoted Shulman or got the statute's legislative history wrong, I don't see how the story isn't accurate.

Originally Posted by Chris Lockwood


Even if the Times interpretation was right, it seems the issue should be with how the law is written, not how the IRS enforces it.

Agreed. It's a case of shooting the messenger.

 

[Sam Posten]

Wow, no wonder so many bored engineers I know have been interested in getting their pilots licenses.... I'm content to let someone else hold our lives on the line =)

 

[Jay H]

Ha, you have to be careful with us engineers... As one myself, when I read his rant/manifesto/diatribe/website, I knew he had to be an engineer... It just fits the profile.


P.S. I don't fly.

Jay

 

[Michael Reuben]

I'm not sure any one profession has a lock on that style.

I saw a lot of it when I worked in the courthouse, more years ago than I care to remember. There's a certain kind of personality that emerges when someone has spent years nursing grievances and dwelling on them privately. You see it in the writings of litigants representing themselves (so-called "pro se litigants") over some elaborate wrong that has become so convoluted that it takes pages of explanation that only they can follow. It's a basic principle of the American court system that the courts are open to everyone; so as long as someone can pay the filing fee, he or she is allowed to submit such a claim and have it get to at least an initial consideration.

Sometimes it gets further than that. I once represented a local law school against a former student who had failed the bar exam at least six times and had an elaborate theory about how he'd been wronged by the law school and various other parties. He knew enough to keep the case going as far as an appeals court, but Stack's manifesto kept giving me flashbacks to that guy's filings. (Thankfully, he never turned violent.)

 

[Chris Lockwood]

Originally Posted by Michael Reuben
Unless the paper misquoted Shulman or got the statute's legislative history wrong, I don't see how the story isn't accurate.

I said it was inaccurate since it said that it was "extremely difficult for information technology professionals to work as self-employed individuals", which simply is not true, from my experience and that of others.

 

[Michael Reuben]

So this guy is making it all up?

Harvey J. Shulman, a Washington lawyer who represented companies that supported the desires of software engineers to be independent contractors, estimated that the law currently affects at least 100,000 such people. “This law has ruined many people’s lives, hurt the technology industry, and discouraged the creation of small, independent businesses critical to a thriving domestic economy,” Mr. Shulman said in an interview Thursday.

 

[Jay H]

On something related but not related, Did you guys hear about the guy who sort of did a frontal assault on the Pentagon? When and shot and injured two Pentagon police and was shot and killed by the cops afterwards... Guess what was his profession?

A software engineer! See... We're nuts!

Jay