Slashdot Mirror

$21.85 per square foot.

That's the "average" price. Active tiles are about $42/square foot, inactive tiles are $11/square foot. Depends on your roof how many of each you need.

Well at least one part of the government is already doing what he wants - Trump's Administration Just Made It Harder to Get Work Visas

I couldn't tell what party he's with from his website but hopefully not with the Democrats, who have let the H1-B situation worsen for years while they collected huge donations from the companies involved in farming out these workers...

as required by federal guidelines established under Obama:

This the same Obama who thought it was perfectly ok to spend two billion dollars on a website that hardly ever worked? Yes please tell us how efficient the Obama administration was at doing more with less in the IT world. Federal employees laugh at the fucking law, and smirk in front of Congress when called to account. You really think they take any "guideline" seriously? The US government no longer represents the people.

Of course they know you use an ad blocker. That's one more data point they have about you ...

It lumps you into the bucket of people with enough initiative to change the default settings on any aspect of their daily existence. You're probably an educated technocrat.

People Who Use Firefox or Chrome Are Better Employees

Michael Housman ... said that while the company's research hasn't identified anything to suggest causality, he does have a theory as to why this correlation exists. "I think that the fact that you took the time to install Firefox on your computer shows us something about you. It shows that you're someone who is an informed consumer .... you've made an active choice to do something that wasn't default."

Okay, you're harder to neutralize with micro-disinformation.

So they suck you into pointless debates about SpaceX, colonising Mars, medical nanotechnology, life extension, the AI singularity, Hayekian economics, Objectivism, or liberal save-the-world TED porn.

Effectiveness: what you know times what you do.

Wolowitz syndrome: able to configure an ad-blocker, but not exactly picking the right fight.
____

I've already got a bit of file on Robert Mercer.

Yachts seen close together — March 2017

As Rene Magritte would say, "this is not a smoking gun." Not yet, anyway. Hey, that reminds me, has anyone here got a match?

Rachel Maddow Explains "The Money Man" — August 2016

Kellyanne Conway, who ran Robert Mercer's Super PAC, she's a very familiar figure in Republican politics.

What Kind of Man Spends Millions to Elect Ted Cruz? — January 2016

Working with his daughter Rebekah, he's spent tens of millions more to advance a conservative agenda, investing in think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, the media outlet Breitbart.com, and Cambridge Analytica, a data company that builds psychological profiles of voters.

Groups he funds have attacked the science of global warming, published a book critical of Hillary Clinton, and bankrolled a documentary celebrating Ayn Rand.

Want a Job in Silicon Valley? Keep Away From Coding Schools: https://www.bloomberg.com/news... This isn't the whole story, of course, because there are good schools, and not all jobs are in Silicon Valley. But once the government starts providing tuition for these places, lots of these "coding schools" with low quality and high tuition will pop up everywhere.

I don't understand your point. The landline network also needs electricity, to run the switches and all the connected phones. Or are cellphone towers in your country not connected to the electricity net?

I'll provide a link here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Anyhow, despite it's dinosaur like qualities, land line telephones have a lot of sophisticated switching going on that makes them bit more resistant to electrical outage. Usually things can be switched around to provide service. Now this doesn't mean that when the pole outside your house comes grashing down and breaks the lines that you will still have service. But I have had several incidences of the cell phone tower's electricity being cut off. At that point it switches to batteries, and if there are a lot of calls placed on it, congestion happens, and then the batteries die. https://www.bloomberg.com/news.... The congestion happens even if the power stays on.

This is not to say that People should ditch cells for landlines, merely an admonition that thinking that cells are an effective emergency communication system is going to find you in trouble. We always get stories about how somoene was saved by a cell phone. That's pretty awesome. But people start thinking that it is a panacea. It is not.

Yeah, solar and wind are incredibly expensive for now. Although it may change in the future (possibly around 2030). As of now they are on government life-support:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

How have you been on /. as long as your ID implies and never learned the difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation?

Are you just that stupid?

Thanks for the flowers,

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

"Apple is exploring cutting-edge technologies that would allow iPhones and iPads to be powered from further away than the charging mats used with current smartphone"

To charge a cell phone over the air - receiving a couple of 100 mA by radio waves in a room with your cell - maybe within 20' distance - you'll need either a concentrated beam to which you expose your cell or have the whole room covered with a very strong RF field maybe similar what the exposure to your head is when listening to your phone which transmits about 1 Watt when sending, which affects your brain:

https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/n...

and potentially creates carcinoms

http://biorxiv.org/content/ear...

- all non-ionizing radiation but affecting cells in bodies exposed to those conditions

Companies are only motivated by maximizing profit not by what is good or bad for people or environment

His link is probably not as invalid as some people would like it to be. Here is another one: https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
Look at the chart of the current and future prices of electricity. The current prices per MWh are:
* coal $40
* wind $80
* solar $100
Though renewables are expected to bet cheaper than coal somewhere around 2030.

The missing piece of this article is that China is dumping a lot of money into developing thorium nuclear power. In comparison, Uranium is expensive, hard to dispose of, way too radioactive, and terribly inefficient.

You mean the one that the US Dept of Energy** is helping them build because they can't convince the US government to fund it?

In the meantime, overcapacity, cost overruns due to mounting safety requirements*** have delayed China's near term nuclear efforts. Maybe their future Thorium nuclear endeavors will go more smoothly...

It's good to have optimism about new things, but sometimes thorium cheerleaders seem to have unwarranted optimism given the issues surrounding nuclear projects in the short history of nuclear power.

**Isn't that department headed by Rick Perry who as a candidate wanted to eliminate that department, but apparently couldn't remember it's name...

***The same cost overruns that have basically pushed Toshiba near bankruptcy and Areva towards a french government bailout

Now, you can argue that some other CEO would have done better, or that the main reason for Yahoo!'s success under her tenure was the decision to invest in Alibaba, made by her predecessor, but speculation about what someone else might have done is unproductive, and she decided to stay with that investment.

I think you may have forgotten the details of this event where she sold 1/2 of their Alibaba shares to provide the funding for the turn-around attempt.

She also tried hard to create a tax-free sell/spinoff the rest of the Alibaba investment to Yahoo investors via an ill fated Aabaco manuever, but that didn't happen and what resulted in the end was Yahoo itself was sold off to Verizon leaving the shares Altaba (aka RemainCo which is Yahoo's remaining investments in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan essentially forever tied together in a under-performing tracking stock).

Meanwhile, the uncertainty of this ill-fated tax-free spin-off attempt clobbered most of the remaining value for shareholders until the sale. I'm not so sure this whole episode qualifies as a success under most metrics...

A better outcome (maybe it could be called successful) would be if she had executed the Aabaco tax-free sell/spinoff of the Alibaba shares to investors something that she didn't pull the trigger on even though most tax advisers thought it would work and provide the best stockholder value.

Democrat run cities seem to be the worst, you can check the stats on that one.

Let's see...San Francisco, median household income: $78,378. Los Angeles, $55,909. Chicago? $63,153. Detroit? $26,095. New York City (Home of the President, Donald Trump), $50,711. Looks like your examples are mostly doing well. The only one that's significantly below average is what, Detroit?

So you've got one. Except Detroit is in Michigan. A state run by Republicans for years. Why haven't they fixed any of that city's problems? Why haven't they done what they did for Flint...oh wait, that wasn't a good thing.

Besides, you want to know what's done about the Homeless? Bus tickets. Out of sight, out of mind.

Of course, this has been a problem for decades problem for decades, but you're too busy blaming Democrats, as usual for yourself, but then...why can you offer no solutions, no miracles in your partisan bastions of prosperity?

Oh wait, you think because you can rail about a few high-profile cities, you think nobody has driven through rural Mississippi and seen the abject poverty there.

And you know what? A lot of those homeless are veterans. Maybe you're just not patriotic enough?

Democrat run cities seem to be the worst, you can check the stats on that one.

Let's see...San Francisco, median household income: $78,378. Los Angeles, $55,909. Chicago? $63,153. Detroit? $26,095. New York City (Home of the President, Donald Trump), $50,711. Looks like your examples are mostly doing well. The only one that's significantly below average is what, Detroit?

So you've got one. Except Detroit is in Michigan. A state run by Republicans for years. Why haven't they fixed any of that city's problems? Why haven't they done what they did for Flint...oh wait, that wasn't a good thing.

Besides, you want to know what's done about the Homeless? Bus tickets. Out of sight, out of mind.

Of course, this has been a problem for decades problem for decades, but you're too busy blaming Democrats, as usual for yourself, but then...why can you offer no solutions, no miracles in your partisan bastions of prosperity?

Oh wait, you think because you can rail about a few high-profile cities, you think nobody has driven through rural Mississippi and seen the abject poverty there.

And you know what? A lot of those homeless are veterans. Maybe you're just not patriotic enough?

Would these suffice?

Sharpest drop in 27 years

Year over year drop of 32%

September 2008: housing starts lowest since 1991

Third quarter drop of 20.5% in housing starts.

It should be self-evident if new housing construction plummets as it did in 2007-2009, all the industries who rely on housing construction would also cut back their production of products. It's the only time trickle down works.

A couple years ago I'd have agreed with you, but a lot has changed.

Toyota unveiled a (admittedly very expensive) hydrogen-powered car that goes >300 miles on a charge and takes 5 min to refuel. Toyota, the largest auto manufacturer in the world, is probably not doing this as an empty gesture. They've announced they'll almost eliminate ICE cars from their lineup by 2050 and have yet to release an all-electric car (just plugin hybrids). They're working with Shell to provide fueling stations, of which there are >80 in Japan and 25 in CA right now, promising 160 in Japan within a couple years.

source: https://ssl.toyota.com/mirai/f...

source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

Hydrogen can be produced via electrolysis of water or salt water from any source of electricity, including intermittent sources like renewables. The efficiency of electrolysis is very high today, approaching 90%.

source: http://www.h2fc-fair.com/hm14/...

It's not a perfect answer, but it's looking a lot less ridiculous than it did a few years ago.

Not surprised, they have officially become a sanctuary company. Their staff has been given the "green light" to protest the current government (and we all know how they feel about the current administration). I see this as a boon for like minded people, but a detriment for the ones that oppose their ideals. This is almost as bad as Starbucks CEO spouting of hiring 15k refugees. They probably pissed off half of their customers with that comment. Oh well, it is their company and I can choose to go else where.

If the GOP was dumb enough to try a coup d'etat by Constitution, they would find out that they don't run as much as they think. There is a reason why they lost the popular vote.

GOP won (by popular vote) 3/4th of state governerships.

Nope. Governorships are not allocated proportionally. Check out the raw numbers, you'll find it is a lot lower.

GOP won (by popular vote) 3/4ths of state legislatures.

Again, nope. Check out the raw numbers, it's heavily warped gerrymandering and voter discrimination. You'll have to do some work, but try the ones that have lost in court. Like North Carolina. Who also tried such a coup d'etat as already mentioned. It failed. Badly.

GOP won (by popular vote) the majority in the Congress.

Nope!

63,173,815 61,776,554 in 2016.
40,081,282 35,624,357 in 2014.
58,228,253 59,645,531 in 2012
44,827,441 38,980,192 in 2010
52,249,491 65,237,840 in 2008

Notice a pattern to it? Not quite what you think. They're still behind 2 million from 8 years ago.

GOP won (by popular vote) the majority in Senate.

Oh, you don't know how the Senate works do you? The Math works out in favor of the Democrats. By 23 million.

GOP won (via the electoral college) the Presidency.

Yes, exactly, relying on the electoral college shows where the GOP is failing.

Every election Democrats lost in 2016 except the Presidential election, was lost in a popular vote.

Oh my, you want to play that card? Turns out, that actually, when you look at the history, you're wrong. Check out the effects of gerrymandering.

Add in the illegal voter discrimination, the unlawful districts in North Carolina, Wisconsin, Texas, Alabama, and Florida, and the loss in their Arizona lawsuit, and it's not looking good for the GOP.

Yeah, I know you don't want to admit it, but the GOP can't afford a coup d'etat. They aren't winning. They don't have a wide swell of popular support. Frankly, they're lucky they didn't lose the popular vote for the House this time, if that had happened, they'd have really looked bad, the disproportionate representation is bad enough, but not quite

So you want to cut salaries for health care workers in the US to the level of those counties? I wonder if those workers will fight that?

For some thoughts that go beyond idle complaining:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view...
https://www.bloomberg.com/view...

Read up. Follow the links. Understand you can't just say "but Switzerland...", as if any country can easily make itself into another country.

So you want to cut salaries for health care workers in the US to the level of those counties? I wonder if those workers will fight that?

For some thoughts that go beyond idle complaining:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view...
https://www.bloomberg.com/view...

Read up. Follow the links. Understand you can't just say "but Switzerland...", as if any country can easily make itself into another country.

Oh that explains why the Forbes 100 has been completely static for the last 200 years. Oh wait...

Forbes Magazine has only existed for 100 years. And companies make and drop off that list for all sorts of reasons.

In any case, use your head: companies constantly reinvent themselves in response to technological changes. It's the norm, not the exception.

And you are living under a rock if you haven't seen the stories about fossil fuel companies exploring alternative energy sources:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

https://www.theguardian.com/bu...

http://www.reuters.com/article...

Etc.

Let's see. First we have more than one can reference on the swamp draining:
Search google for "Trump drain the swamp" and you'll find a quick 469,000 articles to reference.

As for the corporate profits, I think a quick review of his stock portfolio might shed some light:
http://www.businessinsider.com...

A quick search for his financials leads a to a whole lot more. He made a nice penny off the spike in oil last week after a little fireworks show.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/06...
http://www.reuters.com/article...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

And one of his holdings stands to make a pretty penny on replacing those little rockets:
http://www.raytheon.com/capabi...

I can find you more if this isn't enough.

Here's the non-paywalled article from a week and a half ago https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

Yeah, how are they so cheap?

Oh right:
http://www.news.com.au/finance...
http://viewfromthewing.boardin...
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/0...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

I'm just going to leave this right here. Then when you get to the parts where your arguments fall apart you can let me know.

So she seemed to falsely deny Nunes' claim that individuals were unmasked (though Nunes' claim wasn't restated specifically so it hard to know exactly what she denied), she immediately after went into detail how incidental collection of intelligence was legal, so I think a listener would come away with the proper conclusion that transition officials had gotten caught up in the observation of foreign agents.

If the investigations into Trump were politically motivated you would have heard about them in October.

Funny thing, we found out about them about a month ago. And it was started right after Trump became the nominee. It *almost* seems like the previous president was hoping someone else was going to win, and they could simply sweep this egregious abuse of power under the rug.

Kinda strange isn't it? How come you didn't hear about previous administrations doing this...

Started doing what? Spying on foreign diplomats? Welcome to the 19th century.

I'm just going to leave this right here. Then when you get to the parts where your arguments fall apart you can let me know.

If the investigations into Trump were politically motivated you would have heard about them in October.

Funny thing, we found out about them about a month ago. And it was started right after Trump became the nominee. It *almost* seems like the previous president was hoping someone else was going to win, and they could simply sweep this egregious abuse of power under the rug.

Kinda strange isn't it? How come you didn't hear about previous administrations doing this...

No, still not tired of winning

Obama was being petitioned to actually INCREASE the annual quota. But instead he bypassed the existing immigration laws through executive action to allow the fast track of the Green Card issuance for H1B visa holders and increasing the limit.

I for one did not want that direction of change. Trump wants to have US immigration laws benefit US citizens first, not last.

Housing in Australia has several components to it which I will try to cover in this post. I live in Melbourne Australia and I want to provide insight to people interested in learning more. 1. The 1980s Hawke/Keating Market reforms set the country up for the past 30 years of economic growth. Anyone denying that is crazy. They floated the currency, freed up the market for global trade and set the nation on a path to long term wealth. They did however over stamp on the breaks in 1991 causing a short recession. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... 2. Negative Gearing and the Capital Gains Tax concessions are two massive tax breaks for existing home owners. Their effects are huge and not to be underestimated. Negative gearing allows any loss on a property such as repair work or investment loss to be written off against the owner's taxable income. Originally it was introduced to boost investment in the housing market. The Capital gains discount allows a property owner to not pay tax on 50% of their profit on a property when they sell it. In the current market this has created a situation where it is better to leave a property empty, appreciating in value and then sell it without the hassle of dealing with tenants and property management firms. http://www.abc.net.au/news/201... 3. Foreign investment. Market research data from Vancouver shows that implementing a 15% tax on foreign property investment caused a property price drop of around 20%. Where that money is coming from doesn't really matter, the point is that foreign investment accounts for approximately 8-11% of properties purchased in the market. https://www.bloomberg.com/news... 4. Recent studies of water usage in Melbourne and Sydney show that upto 80,000 properties in Melbourne alone lie vacant. http://www.heraldsun.com.au/ne... and http://www.afr.com/real-estate... 5. Immigration, 182,000 people migrated to Australia in 2015-16 the 2016-17 stats are not available http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats... This is a large number by Australian standards, but most immigrants are not rich enough to buy property outright. Mostly they increase competition in the rental market. Most of these people are settling in Sydney and Melbourne with an estimate of 70-80% of people moving to these two cities. http://www.abc.net.au/news/201... 6. The mining/resources boom. In the late 1990s/early 2000s the mining/resources boom brought a ton of wealth into Australia, this prevented a natural correction from occurring in the property market. More money flooded into the market which has helped to inflate prices and keep the cycle going. Now, with all of these factors combining there are many things occurring in the domestic market. Yes the car industry is closing, but overall that's not a big deal so far, because we haven't been exporting many cars for years and it's been a government funded jobs program. Wages are stagnant and growth is quite low at the moment, at the same time we have seen layoffs increasing especially in the mineral states such as Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia. The biggest threat to the economy in my opinion is high house prices growth at a time of high unemployment growth. We are seeing areas which most people would not consider desirable to purchase housing in (traditionally poverty stricken high crime areas)

We have this story right on the frontpage where an average biology graduate makes $31,000 a year.

If you follow your article to it's source, you can see that US$ 31000 is the salary of the average fresh biology bachelor. To work as a scientist in biology and the life sciences, a Ph.D. is essentially a requirement. A bachelor degree is a start, but hardly something that enables you to evaluate serious scientific reports. And biology is not the only subject - statisticians with a bachelor make around US$50000, . And those salaries do not include employer payroll taxes and benefits.

In words, that is One Million Dollars [youtube.com], or, with overheads, maybe around 5 qualified employees.

If the EPA's overhead is 84.5% for paperwork, not even novel science, it's time to end the program.

As pointed about, your salary costs are way off. And then you need to figure in office space and equipment, potentially lab space (and equipment), and yes, administrative and managerial overhead. For desk jobs, a factor of between 2 and 3 seems to be normal in the US - more in countries with a substantive social security system. For lab jobs, the factor is certainly a lot higher. So I doubt that "around 5 qualified employees" is far off even for a reasonably efficient organisation.

What do you think of these stories?

Amazon: Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon's sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers (February 23, 2014)

Amazon: Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace (August 15, 2015) Quote: "The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers..."

Amazon: Amazon Under Fire Over Alleged Worker Abuse in Germany/a (February 19, 2013)

Thanks to the internet and Google, it's very easy to find out the cost of wind and solar renewables and how they compare to nuclear and fossil fuels.
Here are a few references from the first pages of Google results:
https://cleantechnica.com/2017...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
https://www.greentechmedia.com...
https://cleantechnica.com/2016...

Try it yourself, you might learn something.

If your work in climate prediction lowers your company's stocks, you're out of a job regardless of how competent you are. But fudging results that raises the company's stocks has always been encouraged - until you get caught.

Figures. President Donald Trump and Congress have said they want to overhaul policies that allow companies to bring employees from overseas to the U.S. But the application deadline for the most controversial visa program is the first week of April, which means new rules have to be in place for that batch of applicants or another year's worth of visas will be handed out under the existing guidelines. The current H-1B visa program has been criticized for hurting American workers and undercutting salaries. https://www.bloomberg.com/grap...

President Donald Trump and Congress have said they want to overhaul policies that allow companies to bring employees from overseas to the U.S. But the application deadline for the most controversial visa program is the first week of April, which means new rules have to be in place for that batch of applicants or another year's worth of visas will be handed out under the existing guidelines. The current H-1B visa program has been criticized for hurting American workers and undercutting salaries. https://www.bloomberg.com/grap...

When you start off with your head up your ass, you can only spout the bullshit that's collected in your mouth,

1 - the president doesn't have the authority to repeal an act, such as the Patriot Act....congress does; you know, like the republican house that did absolutely nothing while Obama was in office. You too fucking stupid to remember that far back?

2 - https://www.washingtonpost.com...
https://www.bloomberg.com/poli...
http://www.rollcall.com/news/r...
I mean seriously, how fucking stupid do you have to be to not see EVERY damn news article about Gitmo closing had republicans blocking Obama from doing it? Are you seriously that fucking stupid, or is the problem you just can't fucking read?

3 - this just sounds like you being a typical whiny ass republican dipshit who can only spout catchwords they here coming out of some other republicans ass.

4 - just quit being a lying bitch. If you're in a red state that didn't expanded medicare, the problem is your fucking ideologically driven cocksucking republicans who'd rather see people die than get medical help.

5 - http://abcnews.go.com/Politics... You're just a fucking stupid parrot.

6 - have to say, i can't find this rabid-cocksucking-republican talking point anywhere, so i have to assume you're simply full of shit like all the other republicans conspiracy theory fuckwads. http://fairuse.stanford.edu/ov... for reading not tied to some cocksucking republican lying bitch. 7 - here you're just full of shit. opinions are like assholes... like you. Obama didn't obfuscate government transparency more than any other president before him, although VP Darth Cheney probably did much worse without cocksuckers like you saying anything about it. Now you have the worthless twat Trump in office, who appears to be bought and paid for by Russia, and a bunch of co-conspirator republican traitors who won't hold him accountable. Fucking republicans are what's wrong in this country.... traitors, liars, and all around pieces of shit.

Not a single bank executive has seen jailtime for causing the 2008 crisis, even though the extent of damages makes scams like this seem like pickpocketing and it's quite clear that the banks knew exactly what they were doing.when they started creating collateralized debt obligations from the subprime loans to circumvent the credit rating system.

I think at least one of the CEOs of the three nationalized Icelandic banks is in prison.

It's an Icelandic prison, of course, so it's not quite the same as a US prison...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

We've heard all the arguments for and against patents already.

The Supreme Court of the United States hasn't, and that's why this is a big deal.

Funny how, when the CBO contained a clause you could spin as a bad thing - republicans loved it, now they pretend it's meaningless because it's dissing trumpkill.

The CBO is an adversarial source. You can only take seriously the things that they admit which harm their side - the congresscritters who requested the CBO study and placed the operating assumptions that the CBO is required to operate under..

And yet EVERY SINGLE ONE of those corruption cases I cited happened in a state with a private prison to pay the bribes. In fact you're just plain wrong - a public prison has every incentive to make their fixed budget stretch as far as possible, that means as few people inside as possible.

Ok, I looked through every post you made in this discussion. What was the number of corruption cases you cited? ZERO. It's very easy for EVERY SINGLE ONE of your ZERO cited cases to be whatever you want them to be. But even if you had cited a few cases, it's still trivial to cherry pick.

Corruption goes beyond your, ehem, limited selection. For example, we have this public jail example of corruption (and more, here) from New York City. And some of the supposed private corporation bribery was actually done by prison guard labor unions.

The growth of Californiaâ(TM)s incarceration system, and the decline of its quality, tracks the accession to power of the stateâ(TM)s prison guards union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (âoeCCPOAâ). The CCPOA has played a significant role in advocating pro-incarceration policies and opposing pro-rehabilitative policies in California. In 1980, CCPOAâ(TM)s 5,600 members earned about $21,000 a year and paid dues of about $35 a month. After the rapid expansion of the prison population beginning in the 1980s, CCPOAâ(TM)s 33,000 members today earn approximately $73,000 and pay monthly dues of about $80. These dues raise approximately $23 million each year, of which the CCPOA allocates approximately $8 million to lobbying. As Ms. Petersilia explains, âoeThe formula is simple: more prisoners lead to more prisons; more prisons require more guards; more guards means more dues-paying members and fund-raising capability; and fund-raising, of course, translates into political influence.â

And you simply don't understand the conflicts of interest that face jails private or public. They only get funded, if there is a need for the jail and the funding tends to be proportional to the number of prisoners either way.

Well just so you know, they do pay taxes on all that money generated in NZ, it just doesn't go to the NZ government: https://www.bloomberg.com/view...

"It's hard to find much of a precedent for Uber's losses. Webvan and Kozmo.com—two now-defunct phantoms of the original dot-com boom—lost just over $1 billion combined in their short lifetimes. Amazon.com Inc. is famous for losing money while increasing its market value, but its biggest loss ever totaled $1.4 billion in 2000. Uber exceeded that number in 2015 and is on pace to do it again this year [2016]."

Bloomberg

News stories I've found indicate what you said is correct:

Seattle: Together with abusive companies and bad city management, Seattle is a miserable place.

Houses in Seattle are expensive: Seattle bumps Boston as the most expensive U.S. housing market that's not in California.

Rent is expensive: Seattle rent is 5th most expensive in U.S.

Traffic: Seattle one of the worst U.S. cities for traffic congestion, tied with NYC (March 31, 2015) Quote: "An additional 23 minutes a day spent in traffic may not sound like much, but when it adds up over a year it becomes 89 hours." (Whoever wrote that must be accustomed to Seattle misery. An additional 23 minutes a day spent in traffic sounds HORRIBLE.)

Slow internet: Many areas of Seattle have poor internet connections. See the article, These places have the slowest Internet in the country. (June 25, 2015) Quote: "... Seattle ... CenturyLink (CTL) customers trying to access particular sites from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. will have unbearably slow speeds."

Microsoft: Microsoft Is Filled With Abusive Managers And Overworked Employees, Says Tell-All Book (May 23, 2012)

Amazon: Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon's sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers (February 23, 2014)

Amazon: Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace (August 15, 2015) Quote: "The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers..."

Amazon: Amazon Under Fire Over Alleged Worker Abuse in Germany (February 19, 2013)

This just infuriates me. It is part of the reason why people don't have any faith in the two major US political parties. It is sort of like how people will eagerly issue wedding invites to relatives they have no desire to see when they are confident that the invite will be refused. The Republicans now obviously have the same lack of spine as during the last 6 years of the Obama administration. During the Obama administration they quickly rolled over on every debt ceiling increase and budget increase requested. They sent unworkable legislation that they knew Obama would veto (not just Obamacare repeal bills). They were clearly posturing/grandstanding.

This is something you didn't know from the start? Trump's own blandishments were a joke. And his excuse that nobody realized how complicated it was? That's what we call revealing insight into his character.

I can't help but feel that the way they are behaving now is an effort by the establishment types to subvert Trump because they don't like him. Funny enough, I think that they are likely to more damage than the Democrats that also don't like Trump.

Yes, your average Republican is more likely to do more damage than any Democrat, the party has turned crazy enough to elect Trump is full of nutbars.

Yeah, I got whiplash from last 16 years. Rewind to the Bush administration and dissent was patriotic, at least according to the media. It was hysterically funny to see the diehard Democrats who tried to pass themselves off as being all about civil liberties oppose renewal of the PATRIOT Act under Bush, but not really a peep out of those same people when Obama pushed for the same exact renewal of powers as Bush had.

In reality, you were only called racist because you were paying attention only to the deluded ravings of Orly Taitz, meanwhile, unbeknownst to you, the ACLU, EPIC, and FreedomWatch continued their opposition to the Patriot Act, both in the courts and the legislatures.

In fact, most Democrats opposed an extension in 2010,2011 2013, and 2015. Rand Paul might be the only name you know, but Dennis Kucinich and Ron Wyden stood against it numerous times as well.

This is why you have no credibility, you go along with the empty-headed Mi when he plays the "race card" card, while anybody with a modicum of information can point out the flaws to your story. The deep factual ones.

How about growing it on a mesh of a recycled toilet paper. Yummy

Might want to wash that down with Beer made from recycled water...

While everyone will bitch about (with merit) or rave about (maybe with merit) the actual details of the budget, the big requirement this time, MIGHT be, it actually be a budget.

Or at least, soon.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view...

I'm not sure if the current proposed budget seriously expects the debt ceiling to remain in effect. What is sure is that the debt ceiling has been punted in the past: hence it being suspended until yesterday. Talking about the budget without any decision on the debt ceiling is pretty stupid, but we will do it anyway. If the debt ceiling is real, we probably need to cut more than 18% off of a few things, and eliminate more than just a few programs- we probably need to axe at least one department over the next few years. If instead it is just another punt to younger people to pay off our national credit card, then you can go ahead and parse the proposed budget through a petty and partisan lens.

Look at Yahoo. The first, and for some time the best internet search engine. Now dust.

Well, they just had 500,000,000 of their customer accounts hacked:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-16/here-s-how-russian-agents-hacked-500-million-yahoo-users

I had no idea that they ever had that many customers, let alone in 2017.

Amazon: Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon's sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers (February 23, 2014)

Amazon: Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace (August 15, 2015) Quote: "The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers..."

Amazon: Amazon Under Fire Over Alleged Worker Abuse in Germany (February 19, 2013)

Microsoft: Microsoft Is Filled With Abusive Managers And Overworked Employees, Says Tell-All Book (May 23, 2012)

Seattle: Together with Microsoft and bad city management, Seattle is a miserable place:

Traffic: Seattle one of the worst U.S. cities for traffic congestion, tied with NYC (March 31, 2015) Quote: "An additional 23 minutes a day spent in traffic may not sound like much, but when it adds up over a year it becomes 89 hours." (Whoever wrote that must be accustomed to Seattle misery. An additional 23 minutes a day spent in traffic sounds HORRIBLE.)

Slow internet: Many areas of Seattle have poor internet connections. See the article, These places have the slowest Internet in the country. (June 25, 2015) Quote: "... Seattle ... CenturyLink (CTL) customers trying to access particular sites from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. will have unbearably slow speeds."

No they fucking aren't. I can get a ride with uber at half the price or less.

Those rides are subsidized by venture capital money. They're not profitable in how they are operating. They've lost billions of dollars. Enjoy your half-price rides while you can. Once they succeed at starving off the taxi industry, they expect to hold a monopoly over the transportation service market, at which point you will pay way higher fees. Somebody will have to compensate these venture capitalists for all the billions they've lost so far. Sounds like you are their intended target.

And of course both Uber and Lyft are working on autonomous self-driving cars so that they can shaft their human drivers as soon as the tech becomes available, possibly in about 5 years.

  - and Trump has both of them firmly in his mouth.

Trump's accusatory statements REQUIRE JUDICIAL ACTION.
Trump specifically drew a reference to Nixon's criminal action.
Nixon did not have any legal justification, and Trump is asserting that Obama also committed a CRIMINAL ACT.
If Trump falsely accuses any American of CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR,- especially a former president - Trump should be IMPEACHED.

THIS IS AN IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE.

Trumps statements a too serious to ignore.
They deminish what is left of our most basic freedoms.

Trump's accusatory statements REQUIRE ACTION.
Trump specifically drew a reference to Nixon's criminal action.
Nixon did not have any legal justification, and Trump is asserting that Obama also committed a CRIMINAL ACT.
If Trump falsely accuses any American of CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR - especially a former president - he should be IMPEACHED.

THIS IS AN IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE.

Trumps statements are too serious to ignore.
They diminish what is left of our most basic freedoms.

... as MS tries and constantly fails to stay relevant.

The Road Ahead, Bill Gates, 1995.

* Social Networking

"The (information) highway will not only make it easier to keep up with distant friends, it will also enable us to find new companions. Friendships formed across the network will lead naturally to getting together in person."

I guess they didn't follow the Bing Strategy: 5 years after dumping a Billion dollars into Bing is finally profitable.

Sooo, how is that Windows Phone working out ...