Hour 3 of the Monday April 8 edition of A&G features...
From the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio at the George Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty Armstrong and Getty Show, if you.
Bought groceries at Walmart in recent years, the retail giant might owe you some cash. Walmart has agreed to pay forty five million dollars to settle a class action lawso claiming it overcharged some customers for certain groceries bought in store as from October twenty eighteen to January of this year. Customers could be eligible to receive up to five hundred dollars if they kept for seeds, or at ten to twenty five dollars without them.
You got your receipt's going back five years for all your Walmart purchases.
Good for you, I do not. Thanks for tuning in.
We got a whole bunch of stuff to get to this hour that I think is going to be very very interesting.
We're talking you know, tax season.
Taxes are due what a week from today, and you've quite possibly filled yours out already, but some things you might want to know in case you need to go back and add some things in. We'll talk to a tax expert and what law have changed a little bit later this HOURB Right now, I'd like to welcome to the Armstrong and Getty show fan favorite who we used to call Tim, the lawyer Tim Sanderfer. He's the vice president of litigation for the Goldwater Institute.
Welcome Tim, Thanks for having me that guys.
Our main question, of course, is what is the libertarian opinion on solar eclipses.
You're agoinst fantastic.
So I follow your Twitter feed, which I think is everybody should follow because it's damn damn interesting. You were upset when local university to you you're in Arizona paid Ebram x Kendy how much money to come talk at a university?
Thirty five thousand dollars for a one hour speech.
And he is famous for what well.
He's of course the primary intellectual in the anti racism movement, so called because in fact he's a proponent of racism. It's just racism against a different group of people, so it's therefore okay. He's quite open about this fact. He said the only remedy for past discrimination is future discrimination, and he's in favor of that. And so that was the propaganda that he was willing to stew for an hour at Arizona State University and charge the Arizona tax payers thirty five thousand dollars for it.
Yeah, he's the guy that invented this whole idea of there's no such thing as being not racist. You're either racist or anti racist, which is.
Yes, and therefore there are acceptable forms of racism. And that means hating white people is acceptable, whereas anybody else it's not acceptable. And you know, of course, this is nothing new, this sort of this doctrine that it's okay for the so called oppressed to be racist against those who have allegedly oppressed them. You know, that's well over a century old. It was you know, fashioned first in Germany in the nineteen twenties.
Right.
So this transitions nicely into the fact that DEI training, kind of similar to the ibramexkand philosophy, is catching fire all across the country, or has over the last several years. Businesses, universities, schools, all that sort of stuff, and the Goldwater Institute is playing a role in that.
What are you guys doing?
That's right? And now Arizona passed the law not long ago, and a few other states have copied this law. That prohibits the government from requiring people who work for universities to take any kind of training in what the law refers to as divisive concepts. That is, the idea that you are responsible for the crimes committed by others of your racial group in the past, or that you ought to feel guilty, or that the or that you know the country is evil because of these things, et cetera, et cetera. You know, if you want to spew that kind of thing, you're perfectly free to do so, but you shouldn't be able to make me pay for it. And so the Arizona legislature passed this law prohibiting mandatory DEI training and prohibiting the government from spending tax para money to the delop such training even if they don't actually require it. And ASU has basically thumbed their noses at this, and they've been requiring their faculty to take and pass this training program in DEI, and not just take it once, but every every few years. You have to retake it to make sure that you haven't, you know, somehow become a racist in the interim.
What sort of things will they will they I don't know, require you to believe with this DEI training, this particular quality.
The DEI training consists of things like explaining why you know certain forms of expression or you know, microaggressions, why you need to watch what you say in order to because there are people with different backgrounds who have different perspectives who might interpret what you say in a way that is offensive, and so forth and so on, and it's it's the usual sort of thing that we've become accustomed to in the past decade or so. But the big problem here is that this is a form of right think, a form of indoctrination that is basically requiring you to step up and agree. And it's no different than if the school were to require you to take training in a religious view. If they said you are required to sit here and take our day long training on why the earth was created in four thousand and four BC and why the Gospels of the Literal Truth and every other religion is false. We would obviously say, you know, people are free to believe those things, but they shouldn't be able to force taxpayers to shoulder the burden. And that's exactly what's going on. Anti racism so called is just a new religious viewpoint. It's a dogma that can't be shaken by facts or logic. It's just a belief that people adhere to for personal reasons of their own, and they're welcome to that, but they shouldn't be able to force tax payers to subsidize it.
This is a ViBe's question, not a legal question.
Do you feel like the DEI peaked a while back and it's in retreat or on the march?
I do think that, I do think that it has peaked. I think it's going to be around for a while. Of course, because these things never completely go away. They didn't go away after the first time that the ancestor of DEEI was defeated in the April of nineteen forty five, and it's stuck around and it's come back, and I think it'll stick around even after this. But I do think people are tired of it and they're sick of it, and I think there are some great examples of this. There was, Oh my gosh, I've been blanking on the title of the movie, but there's a movie that satirized the cultural attitude in particularly the East Coast, toward race and how everything just has to be categorized in box and it was nominated for an oscar And there are other comedies and things that are starting to make fun of this, and people are just tired of it. I think the culture is turning away from it and saying enough of saying that it's okay to be racist against white people. Why don't we just, you know, accept the idea that all people are created equal and that it's wrong to engage in retaliatory racism.
I hope you're right about that, that it is on the retreat.
It feels that way to me too, but it might be you know, the people I follow versus the rest of the world, that it's People talk a lot about being in a bubble or whatever.
It's hard not to be in a bubble, wouldn't you agree. I mean, you got to work at it.
You have to, really, you have to.
Really seek out other sources.
Otherwise you just keep you know, we all talk amongst ourselves to each other and agreed.
And it's funny because we all thought that the advent of blogging and Twitter and Facebook would would make it easier to get outside of our bubbles. But and I guess it does, but it also makes it easier to stay inside your bubble if you choose to.
Oh.
Absolutely, yeah, which.
A different topic, and I want to get back to the DEI, but do you have any opinions of where you think artificial intelligence is going to take us?
Oh? I, so far my dealings with artificial intelligence have it consisted of me yelling at Alexa for not understanding my question, or just this week, you know, yelling at at like a madman at Walmart's chad box for not delivering my item within the week that it claimed it would. And I feel like an old man screaming at clouds. So yeah, no, I don't really think it's at the stage or we can predict where it's going to go.
Man, it's certainly not there yet. Yeah. I was yelling at the old enough.
To remember when virtual reality was going to be the wave of the future, or the Segue was going to revolutionize life.
Yeah, yeah, well Segue, Yeah, definitely, Segue was supposed to be.
Huge and didn't do anything.
But like I've done the Apple Vision pro and I think, man, I think this could be a big thing for learning or whatever. Yeah, I was screaming at the automated thing at the pharmacy yesterday, what can I help you with? And whenever that the computer says what can I help you with? I always know, well, you're not going to understand my question or my problem.
And they never do, never Jack Jack. Yesterday, Alexa asked me if I wanted her to tell me when it was snowing. I live in Phoenix, Arizona, so I said, yes, please tell me if it knows.
I lost my temper on one of those things the other day. My kids found it hilarious. I was really screaming Cursonally, it's.
Fun of having them, having the fun of having them as losing your temper.
That's why I like it.
Back to the DEI training, so I understand that pretty clear cut on why you don't want taxpayer money going to various colleges to teach people that racism is the way to fix things. Is there anything to be done in private corporations other than culturally?
I do think so, but it takes something that private corporations lack, and that is courage. Unfortunately, history has shown that the last institution you can look for to defend freedom is private businesses. Private businesses, large corporations especially are moral cowards and they very much enjoy profiting off of the latest trend, no matter how antithetical to capitalism and how self destructive it might be. And look at how industry funds the universities, donating money to these campuses where the teaching is almost uniformly anti capitalists, and all that private industry is doing by doing that is feeding and generating its own destroyers and the corporate world. What if there is anybody in the corporate world with a conscience and the clarity to see the importance of moral issues and political issues, they need to.
Cut it off.
And this is another reason why you asked earlier about optimism. I'm kind of optimistic in that I think the backlash against the universities because of the anti senitism that we've seen lately, I think that's a very healthy development.
Yeah, that's a really interesting observation that corporations of actually big corporations almost always do the cowardly thing. And whatever the latest hot trend is, even if it's anti corporation, how do they, after all these years, think this will get us on the right side of the young people and then the love our big, giant, evil corporation.
It is never why I so far I don't understand. In the nineteen seventies, the companies like Exxon would run advertisements about how their fuel was the basis of civilization and it's the good thing, and that was great. They need to do that stuff again. But instead, every day it's more apologizing for the very fact that they exist, feeding the alligator, hoping it will eat them last. And I think if corporate America woke up to how stupid that is and took a stand in self defense and said, you know what, we own this property, it's ours. We have the right to do with that we will want. We have economic freedom, we have the right to make contracts and profit from our hard work. We are generating and perpetuating civilization in this world, and we have rights and they deserve to be respected. I think if a corporation stood up and said that, I think people would rally to their support. I think Americans are sick to death of the apologizing and they and they would love to see somebody in the corporate world with backbone, and they just they just don't see it.
Well, I think you're absolutely right, and the first corporation that does that is going to get so many huzzahs.
You can lay out a screed pretty well.
I know you never had any interest in getting to politics, but I could see you on a stage really getting people fired up if you ever decide to go that direction.
We got a kind of know I couldn't take the pay set.
Yeah, we got a couple more questions for Tim sandfre one of our favorite thinkers. As he has already stated, libertarians are against the eclipse.
Stay tuned war with Tim on the Way.
Armstrong and Getty.
Saturday's powerball drawing was delayed for several hours so lottery officials could complete security procedures for one lucky ticket holder.
It was certainly worth the way.
The lone winning ticket was sold in Portland, Oregon. The winner has not yet come forward. The jackpot was more than one point three billion dollars.
Holy crap, Well somebody won one point three billion dollars.
We're talking with Tim the lawyer, as he's known on the Armstrong and Getty Show, Vice President for Litigation the Goldwater Institute. This might be Tim talking in his personal life rather than representing Goldborger on this question. Tim, I thought about this over the weekend. I almost texted you, but I thought I wanted to ask.
You on the air.
So, the Supreme Court, with one of the rulings fairly recently unleashed the world of legalized gambling across this country, sports betting and this there's a basket. Tim's not a sports fan. There's a big basketball tournament going on right now known as March Madness. It has turned into the biggest legal gambling event in American history, maybe world history. Where do you come down on.
This?
I'm assuming that the libertarian view is why would the government get in the way of you wanting to gamble?
Yes, in fact, that's so much my view that I kind of was puzzled by what your question could be. Of Course, people should have the right to bet whatever they want on the sporting event if they're stupid enough to do.
That, right, So I assume that would be the view, and that's my view too. I hate the idea of the government being able to tell this. Now we probably shouldn't, but the reality is you just said, stupid enough to do it. Lots of people lose lots of money and get themselves into trouble. What's society's role then?
Yeah, So now you've hear it on a point that I think is really important, which is, you cannot have freedom unless you are willing to let people fail. Right, If you aren't willing to let people pay the price for their bad choices, then you are also not willing to let them enjoy the rewards for their wise choices. And what the free market says is people should be allowed to make their own decisions and be re warded for their wise choices and pay the cost of their unwise choices. But if you go around wiping everybody's noses, then you are eventually going to have to take their freedom away. If you promise to pay for everybody's you know, whatever it might be healthcare costs, for example, that's going to create what the economist is called moral hazard. It's going to encourage people to engage in unhealthy activities because why not, Right, You're going to pay their medical bills, so they might as well do whatever they feel like. Well, eventually you're going to go bankrupt that way. So pretty soon you start saying, look, i'll pay for your health care, but you must promise me not to you know, eat red meat or whatever it is. And eventually you start putting so many strings on all of the benefits you're giving people that you're taking their freedom away, and that is inevitable, it's inescapable. So you cannot have freedom unless you are willing to let people make bad choices and suffer accordingly. So my answer to that is, if people bet the farm on a basketball game and they lose the farm, then they lose the farm. And if that puts them at the point of poverty, then they need to come to me and ask me politely if I will give them a second chance, and it's up to me to decide, based on their character and their past behavior, their responsibility, whether They've turned over a new leaf, etc. Whether I'm going to decide to help them out in that crisis. And that is the only humane system in the world. People act like there's something cool about that. Quite the reverse, because mind doing that respects that person as a human being, respects their humanity, and treats them like an equal human being capable of earning their own lives. It's the allegedly compassionate people who go around trying to take away people's freedom and then pay their bills, who are actually treating other people like their children, who are treating other people like their animals, who can't make decisions for themselves. Now, I'm saying that people should be free to make their own choices and enjoy their profits and suffer their rewards accordingly. And I think that the ultimate outcome will be better for everybody. I don't think you will have people starving in this. The freer of the society, the more generous it is. It's always been that way. We are incredibly generous as a society precisely because we are so free.
That is the fantastic answer that I knew I would get by asking you about this. Where do you want people to follow you or turn to you or your substack or whatever.
You can find me at Sandford dot typepad dot com, or at Timothy Sanderfer on Twitter and just google me. I'm all over the place, one of the most interesting people around.
Armstrong and Getty.
Same table news channels.
They're warning you about animals acting weird during the total eclipse. We got this text the eclipse is no joke. Jack woke up this morning and the cat was making coffee. It was decaf.
That is crazy. We got more on the eclipse and other stuff coming up a little bit later.
Every tax season and anytime any big tax story comes up. Guy we always talk to is Stephen Moskowitz Moskuwitz, LP, tax attorney Steven Welcome back to the Armstrong and Getty Show.
I always so enjoyed doing your show. And one of thing you want to talk about this year is that the government has gotten so into our lives. However, they're actually paying us to do some of the things they want us to do. For example, how would you like it if the irs lessen the price of a car you're going to buy by seventy five hundred bucks?
So how is that occurring?
That's the electric vehicle credit. So and also let's talk about the difference between a credit and deduction. If you have one hundred dollars deduction and you're in the thirty percent tax bracket, you save thirty dollars in taxes. But if it's a credit and you have one hundred dollars credit, you save one hundred dollars in taxes.
That's a good distinction, and I think people like that. You're right. I think people blur those two together regularly.
It's a big deal, and it doesn't matter what your tax bracket is. In my example, you saved one hundred bucks so here for getting an electric vehicle, you can save up the seventy five hundred dollars. Now they sweeten it some more because normally most things in taxes you file a form like if we're gonna file this form will be Form eighty nine to thirty six. But guess what. You have an option when you're in the car dealership, you say, you know, instead of my filing form eighty nine to thirty six, I'll give the credit to you. You give me the seventy five hundred bucks. Right now, I'm going to drive out with that seventy five hundred dollars saving. I mean, that's a big deal. Thank you, and yeah, and other things too. Then the government has gotten into the energy efficiency. They're giving this a credit or that's what they call energy efficient home improvements like installing new doors, windows, skylights, insulation, heat pumps, and a lot of other things and water heaters, upgrade to electrical systems and this is terrific. Then they go on and they give another credit for residential clean energy credit. Again, these are things that you're improving your house. For example, maybe you're doing solar or geo thermal heat pump, home battery storage, fuel, sell all these things they're giving the money away, and what about your kitchen. Guess what they're giving you credits for your kitchen too, like an electric stove or cook top, range or oven. And the bottom line is it doesn't stop there because they also go ahead and they're even giving you credits for savings. There's a savings credit where you go ahead and if you put some money into your retirement account, they'll give you a credit for that too. So the bottom line is, I know the government is just so into our lives, but here is something they're really doing for. So these are things you'd want to do anyway, And you might wonder why is the government given all these credits? Because in democracy, the government still can't order us to do something they want, like they right vehicles and homes more efficient, but they can pay us to do it and it's very very effective. So the bottom liners, there're just so much there.
So here's the question, Steve, And I know I think a lot of people have and I don't know if it is this year or next year, whatever, the change in the amount of money, where like if I'm paying babysitters a bunch of money or gardeners or whatever. The ten ninety nine all this stuff where a lot of us have just been paying cash and not worrying about it.
What all changed with the laws on that?
They keep changing that, And the idea of a ten ninety nine is these are payments that you make in business. So the bottom line is, if you're not sure, the answer is really easy to just file it because there's no penalty for filing something you're not required to. That's the way around it. However, whoever does your taxes should know that and be able to tell you. But that's the deal with that, And the other thing you have to watch out for is is this per And here's the big deal about what you're talking about. Is that person truly an indpend contractor, so you don't have to withhold payroll taxes, you don't have to match so security taxes, you don't have to have the workers comp and all that. Or is that person your employee, in which case you have to do all those things and if you don't, you can get in a lot of trouble. So that's another thing you have to watch out for. Is it truly an depend contractor or is an employee? That's a big one. You have to watch out for.
So what makes a sitter or a gardener or whoever you're paying cross the line into being your employee.
Is its amount of money or is there more to it than that?
There's a lot more to it. Usually it's a lot more. How much control do you exercise? So for example, if you say come to my home at eight thirty Monday through Friday, you have an hour for lunch at noontime, end up pretty much working for you. That's an employee. The independent contracy is somebody they have their own business, they have their own employees, they have their own assets, and sometimes there's a close line. For example, the IRS has a twenty question forum where they help you determine is that paye really an impending contractor or the employee. So if you're thinking about that's another resource where you take a look at those twenty questions.
Who gets audited? Like who would get caught in this sort of stuff? Is it mostly rich people to get audited or are they audit Who gets audited?
That's a great question, and the government is very clear that everybody can be audited, but the statistics one who can be audited or with the real answer The higher your income, the more likely you are to be audited. That's one thing. Another thing is there's something called EIF Discriminate Income function. That's where all of our tax returns and go through a computer and they check sixty six different factors and this gives you what's called an audit score for audit potential. The higher your point, the more likely you are to be audited. One factor is your percentage deductions against your income. Another factor is certain categories like do you have a small business loss, did you take a home office deduction? Doesn't mean you can't, they just they are factors they're interested in. And also the total amount of your income, the total amount of yourductions. Another thing that they do, and this is published every year in the Wall Street Journal, is they compare your deductions to the national average. So there's many, many factors. Other factors is how to do in previous audits. If you owe money in a previous audit, they're more likely to audit you again thinking that you've done something wrong again. The bottom line is everybody has a chance of being audited. And something I've always believed is that you should take everything to which you're legally entitled more and no less. And in reality, most people cheat on their taxes. They cheat themselves by not taking everything to which they're legally entitled and missing out because they're so afraid of an audit. And the way I say that is, you wouldn't stop driving your car because at some point a police officer is going to pull you over one so your driver's lessons. Okay, here's the license. There's no problem. And that's what I would say. Make sure you're entiled to something and then go ahead and do it and save the money.
Yeah, I'm sure you're right, And I mean you're in been in this business your whole life, you know it. But I'm sure you're right. There way more people that aren't taking advantage of various things than are taking unfair advantage.
Oh absolutely, way, way way more. And so often you here's something, Oh I don't want to do that, I might get audited, and I'll go back to the car example. That's why so well, I don't want to drive to the grocery store because a police officer might stop me. No, take everything to which you're legally entitled, no more and the lesson. There's so many good things that spell out if you're entitled to something or not. And the government has given us so many benefits. I know complains about the taxes, but I'm into the good part of it, where there's so many benefits. And you take a look at the big companies, the Fortune five hundred, they're making billions and they pay little or no taxes. Wealthy people have an army of people like me. They take everything that the law provides. They just do what the law provides, and they're paying so much taxes. It's like when I talk to a new client, I say, so, do you think you make more or less than Apple computer? And we all laugh and they admit they're making less than Apple computer. But I say, guess what, you're paying more taxes than they are. You have to utilize the tax law. That's what it's there for.
How many pages of tax law are there now?
Oh, it goes on forever. And it's not just the pages of tax law. Every day courts are interpreting the tax law. So the congress people and their infinite wisdom make a law and say you can deduct X, and then the courts determined, well what is X? And so many times and you see this all the time in tax court that the judges of equal rank have totally different ideas of what X is and in real life in the trenches. That's why the IRS settles so many cases, although most cases settle anyway, is that it's called the hazards of litigation where there's so many cases say yes, you can do that, so many cases say no, you can't. So you take a percentage and you'll go home.
When when should someone call you?
Like if you get a well the if I'm in trouble with the IRS, will they send me a letter where they call me?
How will I even find out? And then what's the first thing I should do?
In civil case? Normally they'll send you a letter And the first thing you should do is go ahead and get professional hup because an audit is like a heavyweight boxing match. Nobody but another heavyweight better climb in that ring. On the criminal side, normally they send two agents with gold badges and guns that knock on your door. You have the right to remain silent. You should exercise that.
As you've been saying from your years we've been talking to you. Don't throw away those letters from the IRS and hope it will go away.
As a practical matter. Over the years, it's amazing how many people would walk into my office literally with a stack of unopened the envelopes and say I couldn't bear to open them. I have to literally open the letter in the office and tell the client what was going on. And here's one of the bad parts about that. You have so many rights. For example, there's something let's say you have some taxes and you can't pay it. One of the rights you have is a very powerful right. It's called the collection do process hearing. And what happens with that is that if you disagree with the guy who's trying to collect from you, you can go right over his head to have this special hearing. The irs can't collect from you pending that you have the right to go to tax court if the hearing officer abuses his discretion. You have so many rights. It's a great thing. But you only have thirty days from the date of the letter to exercise it. What a crying shane. If you have an absolute, really really really helpful right and you wave it, you throw it out because you didn't open an envelope. Open the envelope. And if you can't bear too if the psychological thing. And if you can't bear to open the envelope the day you get it, call somebody and let him or her open the envelope for you. We've done it for lots of clients.
Hey, we're out of time, but that is a good note to leave on in one frag you get the letter from the irs, open it, deal with it right away because it's only to your advantage. And if you and again if you can't open it, take it to Stephen or someone like Stephen Moscow. It's lop dot COM's website. Thank you, Steven, and another big tax log.
It's passed. We'll talk to you to figure out what it means.
Thanks so much. I had a great time as all guys, you bet.
Thank you.
So here's one thing that always sticks in my mind that Stephen said. I think we were at lunch with him one time and he said this always sticks in my mind. He said, somebody is offering you a deal with one hundred thousand dollars. Somebody's offering you a deal with one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Which one do you take? And you know the obviously you think the one hundred and fifty thousand. He said, it depends on the tax ramifications. And that's something that I think about all the time. Now, if you're going to get I don't know whether it's salary or an inheritance or a car or whatever the heck it is, what are the tax ramifications, because it might be that the smaller number is better for you because of the way the taxes fiddle it figure out and where it falls. And you know, I've learned a lot about that from him through the years. Eat lunch with Steven Moskuwich. You learned a lot about taxes. God tell you about this. So you take your money you get to keep after the government takes your taxes, and you buy a lot of stuff for your home.
Then somebody comes in in the middle of the day and steals it from you. That sucks. That's why you need Simply Safe to stop that from happening.
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So that's worth hearing. Coming up.
Armstrong and Getty.
A man diagnosed with schizophrenia has been given a support dog that can help him determine what is real and what is a hallucination.
But the craziest part is there's no dog. They Now.
I did think Saturday and Alive was funny and they didn't do politics, which is one of the reasons is funny. That's when he needs to get to get back to as being a sketch comedy show with silly sketches like playing Jumanji. They did with Kristen wigg in the first sketch, which I thought was hilarious, played it for my kids. We left left and it didn't have anything to do with Trump or Biden or politics or abortion or anything like that. Speaking of abortion, I'm going to do this quickly. Trump put out his statement today. People to the right of Trump on abortion. We're hoping his position he would run on would be a national ban, federal ban on abortion.
That isn't where he is. He announced he wants to leave it to the states.
So he triumph the fact that we got rid of row with his judges, and that's a good thing saying, but he wants the states to decide state by state how to handle it, which is kind of interesting given the fact that Lindsey Graham, Senator from South Carolina, home of the undefeated Game Cox, who beat poor little Caitlin Gark. Lindsey Graham came out and said I break with Trump on this issue. He is wrong, abortion is wrong, and his murder. You know that argument, and it shouldn't be left up to blue states to get to continue the atrocity that is late term abortion. I understand that position completely. I just think politically, for Donald Trump to get elected president and have any influence on the debate at all, he's got to be where he is, which in general is where most of Americans are. Not the people that have already made up their mind Biden or Trump, but the people are persuadable. We'll see how this plays out, and if they ever have a debate I doubt they do, that topic will come up. I think Trump has taken abortion off the table for lefties, That's what I think. I don't think they're gonna be able to hammer him as some sort of right wing extremist like they have been. Trump is going to support the Florida what is a ten week ban? That sort of thing. He's not, well, actually he is in the fact that Florida gets to do what they want, but so does California and New York.
In Trump's view, just came across his story in the New York Post.
Keeping your data hidden from Apple is virtually impossible. Experts warn it's the first time a deep dive has been done on Apple's own apps. Apple does a better job in being careful of what apps third party apps you can get on the phone and what happens with data and that sort of stuff. But this research says that Apple, the apps that come with your phone or your iPad or whatever that you can't get rid of, suck up a lot of data from you, whether you want them to or not, and there's pretty much no way to disable them. I'm talking about Safari, that's the search engine I use on my phone by you, Siri, Family Sharing, Imassage, FaceTime, which we use all the time, location services, find my and Touch Idea for instance.
Here's a good one.
If you're given the option to enable or not enable Siri, I don't have SyRI enabled on my phone. That's the Apple's virtual assistant. But enabling only refers to whether you use Siri's voice or not. Siri still collects data in the background from other apps that you use, regardless of your choice, unless you understand how to go into the settings and specifically change that.
But it's kind of complicated.
Maybe you know how, but I don't, And they use a whole bunch of other examples, the main takeaway being well, I guess one, if you thought Apple was a little better protecting your security, it might be, but it's a long way from what you would like it to be. And two, everybody knows everything you do and always will, and there's nothing you can do about it. Somebody's collecting everywhere you go, whether you have your location device on or not, your your fine me thing on or not. Somebody's keeping track of your browser history, whether you're incognito mode or not, as we learned last week with Google. Uh, your financial history, your email, everything you do with a computer, somebody has got stored somewhere.
That's the takeaway we should all have all the time. We'll keep our eye on the eclipse directly.
We'll stare at the sun, see how the animals reacting, all that sort of stuff, and report tomorrow.
Armstrong and Getty