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The Federal Bureau of Investigation is expanding beyond its traditional fingerprint-focused collection practices to develop a new biometrics system that will include DNA records, 3-D facial imaging, palm prints and voice scans, blended to create what's known as "multi-modal biometrics." "The FBI today is announcing a rapid DNA initiative," said Louis Grever, executive assistant director of the FBI's science and technology branch, during his keynote presentation at the Biometric Consortium Conference in Tampa.

It's intellectually dishonest to have a discussion over the fairness of the tax code and welfare programs without FIRST addressing the inherent inequality of our labor markets, capital markets, access to education, access to the judicial system, access to infrastructure, and intellectual property laws. Fundamentally, if a business leader makes his profits from paying his employees minimum wage at $7.50/hour in an area where a decent livable wage is $15/hour, but where workers have little negotiating leverage and few other options, then it is RIGHT to expect government to tax the business/owner at a high percentage and the workers at a low percentage, and to use tax funds to provide the under-compensated workers with housing and food assistance, as well as other forms of aid. In that scenario, the scenario in which most of our country operates (accounting also for middle-class wage-earners that are under-paid), it is disturbingly unfair to demand that "equality" be applied only at the tax code (even moreso that it only be leveled at the income tax, specifically), as if wealth is earned solely in proportion to some fantastical Randian ideal of personal worth and NOT heavily influenced by real-world power dynamics.