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I was kind of curious so I did some quick Google searches. There was one article based on a report about which states are most susceptible to corruption. The top state was curiously enough North Dakota which apparently is due to the fact that they have few laws or regulations in place designed to prevent it. Texas was 1 of 16 states with a passing grade in that report.

Another article discussed the results of a study that looked at convictions for federal anti-corruption laws to establish rankings. Here the most corrupt state was Mississippi. I had to click through to the study since Texas wasn't in either the top or bottom 10, but it's listed as the 18th least corrupt state in the rankings.

One article that did report Texas as corrupt (it only came in 15th) was one which cited a report that looked at laws in systems each state has in place to prevent or curtail corruption. In this case the worst rated state was Wyoming.

FiveThirtyEight also has their own article from a few years back that delves into the topic. Texas does have a lot of corruption convictions, but on a per capita basis, it's in the top third. In this assessment, Louisiana is the most corrupt based on convictions per capita, Kentucky had the worst reporter rating, and Georgia is indicated in having the greatest lack of laws to prevent corruption. Oregon, Massachusetts, and New Jersey are respectively the least corrupt states based on those same categories.

In conclusion, you can apparently measure corruption in several ways and get a variety of results. Texas seems to be pretty middle of the pack in an overall sense.

https://www.nytimes.com/intera...
https://www.cheatsheet.com/cul...

Spoiler: for the worst lies, Obama raked in 2 per year, Trump was on course for 124 per year (but that only counted his first 10 months in office - it's higher now).

I can see the utility letter now. "Our costs are rising due to less profit from solar, we will be raising your electric bill to be more in line with your mortgage payment"

You can see it. I lived it, but with water. After decades of being use to use less water, "The city utility is also charging higher fixed fees so that revenue is stable, even as water use declines." Yes, Austin raised water rates, because we used less water.

Please give me a couple of links to the facts you supposedly have.

"I don't think Ivanka would do that inside the magazine [pose for Playboy] although she does have a very nice figure. I've said if Ivanka weren't my daughter perhaps I'd be dating her."

More: https://www.elitedaily.com/p/9...

Oh yeah, and this:

https://www.cheatsheet.com/wp-...

They took 'er, wait, hold on, gave 'er jobs?

Mid-sized markets never had a chance, this is known. And Bezos already owns mansions in DC (the Obama's are neighbors) and New York (Manhattan).

https://www.cheatsheet.com/mon...

I wonder how much healthcare could be provided with the taxpayers $13 Billion?

Hmm, 330 megapeople, $13B....

That works out to about $40 per person. So, maybe one doctor's visit per person, at best?

That's a lot of doctors visits. I know it's not a great deal of money however consider it also from another perspective, the amount of money the military wastes with The Washington post exposing $125 Billion in wasted Military spending . That's roughly 10 doctors visits per person, just from the waste spending alone.

For GM's effort to be successful, their lobbyists will also submit model legislation progressively requiring the abandonment of personal vehicles and hold harmless laws / limited liability for the manufactures and operators of autonomous vehicle systems. Brings to mind history:

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"The General Motors streetcar conspiracy refers to convictions of General Motors (GM) and other companies for monopolizing the sale of buses and supplies to National City Lines (NCL) and its subsidiaries, and to allegations that this was part of a deliberate plot to purchase and dismantle streetcar systems in many cities in the United States as an attempt to monopolize surface transportation."

The driver is the auto industries attempt to create an artificial market. Historically, the fundamental basis of personal vehicles was the suburban lifestyle and commuting. Now, most major urban areas have Growth Management plans in place to concentrate residential growth into concentrations ('urban villages') with access to mass transit, urban cores are gentrifying, and worst for them, vehicles themselves are lasting longer and have reached asymptotic performance improvement, and ludicrous price points.

See "Average age of household vehicles for several years" ( https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/s... ). A car in 1969 had an average lifetime of 5.1 years, in 1990 it was 7.6 years, 2009 it was 9.5 years, and now in 2016 it is 11.6 years. Who is buying is also a problem for them ( http://www.autonews.com/articl... ):

The average new car buyer is now 51.7 years old and earns about $80,000 per year, while the average age of the population is 36.8 years old and the median income is roughly $50,000, Szakaly said. ... “It takes four millennials to replace one boomer” in terms of economic impact, Szakaly said. “There’s going to be this gap between baby boomers and millennials.”

Also, look at the auto industries track record handling any sort of technical problem ( https://www.cheatsheet.com/aut... ). And we can't even get automated trains, an essentially 1 dimensional problem, correct. Two years, right - it takes a commercial aircraft nearly a decade to get a type certification, with 'only' hundreds of lives at stake.

Basically, eventually they hope to follow the same defacto monopoly model of the cable companies - regional and local monopolies with non-existent competition.

My observation is that wealth transfers are focused on the poor while the middle class gets little relief thus the gap between middle class and poor shrinks. Already in many states it makes more sense to be on welfare than work (citation below). ...

  https://www.cheatsheet.com/cul...

Interesting. Looking at that link, however, a large portion the "welfare" analyzed is via the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families is time limited-- that's what the name means. And the temporary assistance has specific, written-into-law criteria for transitioning off temporary assistance before you can get on it. So, your statement should be modified: "Already in many states for short periods of time it makes more sense to be on welfare than work."

https://www.cheatsheet.com/cul...

Being a social media slacker is a big no-no, according to HR experts. Seventeen percent of those surveyed by OfficeTeam said infrequent posting, an incomplete or out-of-date profile, or no profile at all were the biggest social media flubs they saw among job seekers.

From this article In 2009, 18.6% of the population was participating in at least one means-tested benefit program. That number was up to 21.3% in 2012. But the increase in welfare participation seems to be leveling off; there was no statistically significant rise in participation from 2011 to 2012.

Participation wouldn't be increasing if no one was getting anything out of it.

California has been working very hard to drive out all businesses AND taxpayers with the highest overall taxes in the entire country.

Bull shit!

For those unable to read: CA is ranked #10 in one of those surveys and doesn't appear in the other list of the top 10 states for overall taxes.

they just have to have a TV show that a million people are willing to spend $20/season on

$20 million? That's a cheap show by Netflix's standards.. "The Get Down" cost almost $200 million for a season.

But I would submit that this is entirely different from tinfoil-hat arguments that McDonald's was somehow saving buttloads of money by serving their coffee litigiously hot, which would be more fitting as an item in the Evil Overlord manual.

They were saving a little bit of money at the risk of giving customers serious burns. It's from the Stupid Overlord manual.

Again, what I'm saying is that if you can set aside for a moment your obvious...

That's why they're running only two things, Jack and Shit, and Jack has left town: McDonalds "restaurants" are closing left and right as former customers increasingly opt to eat something else.

...intense dislike for McDonald's, (which I don't necessarily fault) and actually look objectively at what you've written, you could see that it doesn't pass the bullshit test. It reads just exactly like those memes that exist solely because people who dislike the target *want* to believe them.

If you've worked for food service (I don't really want to think about that part of my life -- Pre-IT-career, I rose to manager of a fast food joint during a time I would soon forget.) you'd know that considering end-to-end cost, coffee is the third cheapest beverage to serve, right behind (2) iced tea, and (1) non-bottled water. Serving an inexpensive (most of the cost is labor, and most of *that* is borne by employees who'd otherwise be standing around waiting for customers) beverage at an unwantedly-high, (which I dispute, more in a moment) accident prone and ultimately litiguous temperature merely to reduce the cost of refills is *pragmatically* idiotic. Never mind the moral implications, it just doesn't make sense from a business standpoint to risk litigation just to save on COFFEE REFILLS.

And again, regarding the temperature, check by: Observe that shops that are in the *business* of selling coffee serve that beverage in *demonstrably* the same temperature range as was claimed in the litigation. (Feel free to measure it yourself. I have.)

The other guy had a point about the cheapness of the cups. I had not considered that. But the mere temperature and tinfoil-hat legal arguments just don't fly.

But I would submit that this is entirely different from tinfoil-hat arguments that McDonald's was somehow saving buttloads of money by serving their coffee litigiously hot, which would be more fitting as an item in the Evil Overlord manual.

They were saving a little bit of money at the risk of giving customers serious burns. It's from the Stupid Overlord manual. That's why they're running only two things, Jack and Shit, and Jack has left town: McDonalds "restaurants" are closing left and right as former customers increasingly opt to eat something else. Since about WWII (apparently, I had to look it up) operating a franchise has been the go-to way for an idiot with a medium-sized handful of money to print more money. It's not typically the brightest of the bunch that sends off for the official Mickey Deeznutz magical restaurant kit. If you're planning to sling cheap chow and you're smart, you at least get the Irish-Pub-In-A-Box, because people buy booze even in recessions. We've all been there, right? Irish Nachos? What the fuck is this?

http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topic... http://www.cheatsheet.com/auto... It seems Tesla isn't doing to bad. The Nissan 350Z had 143 deaths per million registrants.

Links? Evidence? This link is a year old, but it tells the same story that's been holding true for some years:

http://www.cheatsheet.com/gear...

Number of subscribers is not the same as profit. According to your own info, Netflix makes less from streaming subscribers in the US, while losing money internationally. They hope to break even this year with streaming, and to eventually profit through numbers. Like the Amazon strategy. Will that work? Maybe. But they also have a lot more competition in streaming than they do with discs by mail. (Including Amazon, which will go to any length to set the lowest price.) Either way, the discs-by-mail business is solid, yet dismissed simply because the method is not considered "cutting edge". That strikes me as a wildly irrational assessment of the business.

The problem with side mirrors is about 80% of drivers are idiots and aim both side mirrors to show you the view behind the car, which is already covered by the rearview mirror.

Given that /. has lots of engineers and scientists among the userbase, I'll be generous and guess that about 50% of slashdotters get it right, and the other 50% are imbeciles who have all three mirrors looking directly behind the car.

When mirrors are properly adjusted, there are no blind spots.

http://www.caranddriver.com/fe...
http://seniordriving.aaa.com/i...
http://www.cheatsheet.com/auto...
http://www.wikihow.com/Set-Rea...

What the fuck are you like 63 and a smoker or something?

I've got a silver HMO for under $250/mo from the exchange without subsidies (I have a job in Texas) that has a $3500 out of pocket maximum. Alaska seems to be the most expensive place to get a silver plan at $488/mo. If you're paying more than that for something worse than silver level, maybe you should move.

I know you can get a barebones XBOne for $300 or so, but for around $400 you can build a gaming PC that will outperform it and be capable of so much more. Here are a few links I found after just a quick Google:
http://www.toptengamer.com/top...
http://gamingbolt.com/how-to-m...
http://www.cheatsheet.com/tech...
http://bgr.com/2014/09/11/chea...

Boeing collects $13B in subsidies from taxpayer https://www.washingtonpost.com... http://america.aljazeera.com/o... http://www.cheatsheet.com/busi... then spies on taxpayer. http://heavy.com/tech/2014/11/... http://www.wired.com/2014/11/f... http://www.usnews.com/news/art... Not cool, Boeing.

About Mississippi:

Cheap housing.
One of the largest cotton producers in the world.
Lowest-ranked K-12 schools in the country.
Lowest per-capita income (ranked 51st, included DC)

It'd be the perfect spot for a web-based robot factory for direct-ship tailor-made clothing as long as you import the tech work.
Any other ideas?

Honestly, how do you think Trump has gotten himself rich if not by fleecing investors and having shady business partners?

And, really, why would you take him at his word?

My guess is that he's really adept at transferring other people's money into his own pockets. He's got a long history of being a pretty sketchy player and leaving his business partners holding the bag.

Donald Trump seems every bit a complete charlatan and a con man ... he's been failing at business ventures and going bankrupt quite publicly for a long time. And I'm sure he's been leaving a trail of people in his wake who find themselves having been ripped off.

Netflix and Amazon are both producing their own content now. If HBO and AMC vanished, there are other ways for their studios to receive distribution.

It is, however, a valid point that Netflix may start getting commercials. They recently promised that they wouldn't (after scaring everybody by running some commercials for their own content, in front of their own content), and that probably holds for the next few years. HBO isn't going anywhere just yet. After that... well, a lot can change. Netflix is already facing competition from Amazon, and I bet Apple would like to get in on it as well. Probably more.

I have let Netflix know that I cancel my subscription the day I see an ad on streaming.

Let's see, gasoline costs 3 times as much, eggs cost double, bread is almost double.

At a rough 3% CPI index, it'd take 24 years for consumer prices to double. If that's the sort of time frame you're referring to, and your wages have risen only 25%, then yeah - you're getting screwed - but we already knew that.

shouldn't that be going after the upper class instead of the middle class?

There's certainly a good argument for that, yeah. Many feel upper-class incomes should be reducing, while lower & middle incomes should increase - but you'd still expect lower-class incomes to increase more than your own. It's notable that concerns about minimum-wage increases often come from slightly higher incomes who are afraid of ending up on minimum wage themselves as a result, even if their own wage doesn't decrease.

That said, there's a lot of evidence behind your views, so you're not alone, but perhaps minimum-wage earners aren't the ones deserving of complaints.

Current charge times make "recharge when the driver stops for breaks" impossible.

Of course they don't. You don't have to charge an EV from empty to full every time any more than you have to wait for an ICE vehicle to go empty then fill the tank to the top. With an EV the thing is to top it up at every opportunity. The batteries won't be empty, and you don't have to wait till they are full.

My quick check of Google shows that while the $85,000 Tesla has a 240 mile range, most cars are 90 miles. That's an hour and a half on the freeway and you're completely out of juice. While you don't have to wait for an ICE car to be empty, it only takes a couple minutes to fill from 50 miles remaining to 450. For commuting electric cars are great. Very efficient in stop and go, and yes you can top up everywhere you stop (if they have a charger). However the range, and time to charge does put a big damper on long distance trips. Tesla is trying to address this (with over 2.5x the normal range, and Supercharger stations), hopefully it filters down to all models, but right now Tesla is priced out of reach of most consumers.