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Because that's your actual actuarial risk including the middlemen's 50% cut.

One of the specific provisions of the ACA is to limit that cut to 20%. Companies have had to actually send rebates when they took in more than that.

Whether the middleman's value is worth even that much is a different question. It's not completely valueless: they negotiate the price with the hospital, and they're on your side in wanting to pay less. It would much much harder for you to do that yourself, since you're not an expert in the cost of care or on what anybody else paid. That's a benefit to some, and a cost to those more savvy negotiators. I can tell you that I'm not in the latter category.

So it is an income redistribution plan. What we really need is a prosperity plan

I'd argue that there's certainly plenty of wealth in this country. Net national wealth is $83.7T, so that's about $280k per person (or $301k per person according to a recent Credit Suisse Global Wealth report); most people wouldn't be complaining if their net worth was $280k --- most Americans today have a net worth that is less than $45k. While more prosperity is always nice, it's somewhat unreasonable to make baseless claims that redistribution of wealth is less needed than prosperity. While I can sympathize with the fact that redistribution of wealth may not be compatible with your personal ideology, it would probably be better for everyone if we could discuss these issues in terms of numbers and facts, not political preferences.

Why put in 3 round gears and a differential when one (precisely manufactured) larger gear is "close enough"? Technology does help, but commoditization is the enemy.

Which is truly sad since commoditization could make good things cheaper if mass produced. I want the future promised where stuff doesn't wear out but most people just want a cheaper one. If Lego can mass produce plastic bits that have tolerances of 2 microns then why can't other manufactures of higher end things do so. I mean people are willing to pay more for quality since for toys Legos aren't cheap but are very well made. Even on the secondary market a major selling point of bulk lots is stating that there are no Mega Blocks.

Wish I had mod points to give you. The ONLY reason cable is alive today is live sports. Period. The cable cos know this, and this is why they pay billions to lock up exclusivity rights to the major sports. The sports leagues are more than happy to take this handout rather than dealing with broadcasting their product themselves. The problem is, enough people are starting to cancel cable and people will eventually loose interest in sports that they cannot watch.

Right now it is prohibitively difficult to watch live sports online, especially local teams. I feel are in the "Napster" age of watching sports online. It takes a semi-techie to pull it off and it is of questionable legality and quality. The league or network produced online services like NBA or MLB Pass are poorly executed. They black out in-market local games (this is pretty easy to bypass with DNS or VPN). Playoffs and national games aren't included. They don't even bother to draw advertising revenue, as you often see one commercial over and over or a blank screen during breaks.

Sooner or later Content providers (like sports leagues) will just sell their broadcasting direct to consumer, a la carte. I think they have to do this or they will lose their audience. But for now, they will take the Cable Co's Titanic full of money.

Late reply, sorry.

Because laws like that so very successful in wiping out Judaism and Christianity, that only know of them through ancient historical texts, right?

Yes. Not wiping them out around the world, but wiping them out in countries where they are no longer welcome. There used to be many Christians in the Middle East. Laws and state-sanctioned violence against Christians is largely responsible for their exodus.

Another example would be, what do you suppose the Hindu population in the land area of Pakistan looks like today compared to 100 years ago? Are you aware that many Hindus were forced out after partition and did not leave voluntarily?

Secondly, it was not illegal [aljazeera.com] to be a member of the Klu Klux Klan in July. Although several Florida police officers were fired for being members.

I'm not talking about July. I'm talking about things like the KKK Act:

After the act's passage, the president had the power for the first time to both suppress state disorders on his own initiative and to suspend the right of habeas corpus. Grant did not hesitate to use this authority on numerous occasions during his presidency, and as a result the first era KKK was completely dismantled and did not resurface in any meaningful way until the first part of the 20th century.

As far as I understand that restriction was on "display" of religious symbols and icons in public schools by teachers (and other staff) as part of their separation of church and state laws. If there is a broader law that you wish to cite, you may need to provide a link to the law.

Yes, there are many broader laws I could cite. The easiest is probably the recent law against public use of the burqa since it's a religious symbol. http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/...

You are incorrect that it has to do with separation of church and state. This is talking about regular citizens in public. Ever since the French Revolution, France has had a more hostile attitude towards religion than most Western countries, and imposes much greater restrictions on religious practice than others.

Proselytizing -- by private citizens, not officials of the state -- is also restricted.

"It is very illegal for a merchant to store your credit card number"

http://money.cnn.com/2013/12/22/news/companies/target-credit-card-hack/

http://bgr.com/2014/09/22/home-depot-credit-card-hack/

Then how do these CC thefts occur?

Which I guess is the major strategy of Al Qa'e'da - asymmetrical attacks

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WO... Per Osama Bin Laden, their goal is to bankrupt the USA. They seem to have achieved a pretty good ROI if the returns are counted as dollars spend by the US fighting Al Qaeda. They don't even need to do anything these days, just having their name mentioned can cause costly countermeasures to kick in.

Isn't it easier to just drive carefully, refrain from exceeding the posted speed limit by more than 5-10mp

Speed limits are rarely set by how fast you can drive at a safe speed on a given road, rather than arbitrary zoning.

But even that is following the canard that the only people wanting to know where the cops are are those looking to break the law. In the age of DWB, asset forfeiture, checkpoints, revenue generation, and cops being free to murder innocent people with impunity, that's obnoxiously naive.

Let me disabuse you of this notion:

http://www.who.int/features/20...

http://www.ibtimes.com/ebola-o...

And, a money quote from the CNN article below:

"While the United States and several other wealthy countries have been happy to pledge funds, only Cuba and a few nongovernmental organizations are offering what is most needed: medical professionals in the field," the New York Times opined in an editorial.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/21/...

But, USA USA USA USA

right.

CNN says she was " put in an isolation tent inside University Hospital in Newark"

The CA incident was reported on /., so I was already familiar with that, but if anyone was wondering about the GA incident...

She speaks Cantonese.
She has close relatives who speak only Mandarin (and Zuckerberg wanted to communicate with them).

So it makes perfect sense to call her Chinese in this context.
  http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/2...

How about here. Another point is that Mali is next door to Guinea, where the outbreak this year is believed to have started. Is it really news that a disease crossed a border? Another case is the US is different because it is on a different continent and indicates that WHO is having difficulty containing the outbreak

There aren't.

There are.

Sure, because they first thing a warehouse worker does on payday Friday is fly over to a place where the laws are different... What universe are you in?

The one where he doesn't need to.

Maybe there's a better word for it,

Because the word you so badly want to use doesn't apply, and you know it.

but the whole idea is that we in the West are a post-industrial society, and the best way to make money is to become a middleman to questionable transactions like 15% cheque cashing, or make money off the other rentiers.

Irrelevant. Both transactions involve consent, which is mutually exclusive with theft.

Both transactions produce nothing, yet transfer money up. Theft.

Claiming that the transactions "produce nothing" is a lie, because you are aware that in both cases, valuable services are being provided. You can argue that check-cashing is excessively expensive (something that I have never denied, though you have certainly pretended I did), but "is it exploitative?" is an entirely separate question than "is it theft?". There is a good argument to be made for the former question, but the answer to the latter can never be anything other than "no".

You go on to lie again, by repeating your claim that the transactions are "theft", even though your previous paragraph openly admitted that it isn't.

"A product or service is worth what its purchaser is willing to pay for it. "

If there's no choice, there's no will. A warehouse worker who can't get a bank account and has to use a sketchy place isn't going to be able to just magically go to a jurisdiction that favors him...

First, I said that in regards to the $50 salad. By attempting to change the context of my statement, you have admitted that you can't refute it.

Second, you have been shown absolute and irrefutable proof that there is a choice. Therefore, there is will, and thus consent. Consequently, no possibility of "theft". Not that you really needed that proof, as you were aware that other choices existed even prior to this post.

You have continuously wiggled your way out of the truth by using ridiculous counter-examples that apply to no poor person. You will continue to hide your obvious psychopathy and lack of empathy by pretending to be this intellectually rigorous debater when you're just a cunt.

This clumsy attempt at turning my own weapons against me is an acknowledgement of their effectiveness, and thus, that absolutely everything I have said about you is 100% accurate.

Furthermore, my "obvious psychopathy and lack of empathy" exist entirely within your imagination, and are an excuse on your part to avoid thinking about the topic by assigning to me the traits you desperately want me to have and focusing on the much easier task of assassinating (your made-up version of) my character. You would not do this if you had any confidence or ability to argue the facts.

There is no need to throw up your hands and give up. Chatanooga managed a high speed public interenet. http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/2.... Plus, you have people like Lawrence Lessig going after the root of the problem of corruption, and getting some serious traction with Mayday PAC. http://mayday.us./ Hell, even I am trying to fix the problems, but I am not getting too much exposure or traction. http://i-party.us./ But I still have hope. There are too many people trying to fix the problem of corruption and increasing monopolistic control for everyone to fail.

When someone says "Megacorp", they typically mean this. There are a few companies on that list that will pay that (GS, INTC, JPM, MSFT), depending on where you work. But the majority will not.

Huh!? There was just a major scandal involving privacy violations of Apple cloud data - the nude celebrity leaks. It was a big deal, reported everywhere,

If by major scandal you mean celebrities far too stupid to pick a secure password, then yes.

I'd hardly classify Taylor Swifts "eyeH8men!" password as a hack...

Huh!? There was just a major scandal involving privacy violations of Apple cloud data - the nude celebrity leaks. It was a big deal, reported everywhere,

The Nurses catching the disease did have direct contact with bodily fluids. Kind of hard to be more intimate than that. Also, the Deputy does not have ebola and this was known as late as 5 days before this comment: http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/09/.... Methinks AC has not researched enough.

Wait, what?

The entire body is built in a different way. The primary body components are a "sled" with the powertrain and battery packs. This rigid sled makes the vehicle's center of gravity substantially lower than any other vehicle and makes the passenger compartment substantially more rigid. Both of these things result in a much higher safety than any other vehicle on the road.

Second, the vehicle is entirely drive-by-wire, which may scare the luddites, but is really the future of automotive technology.

Third, it's not only the fastest accelerating production care EVER built for under $1 million (and it only costs $95k in that config), but it also had the single highest rating ever given out by "Consumer Reports", last year, beating every single Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Ferrari, Cadillac, etc in their metrics (drivability, comfort, quality, performance, style).

http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/0...

It also received the highest rating ever given to any car by Car & Driver magazine.

It beats the 7-series BMW and the Jaguar S-Type and the Audi A8 on a level playing field.

"a Ford Fusion"

LOL

Oh, in case you need to read some old news

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9609/...

Clinton (in addition to setting up disastrous financial policy - the removal of the Glassâ"Steagall Legislation that is still having disastrous repercussions to the economy today) Was shooting at and Bombing Iraq all the way thru his administration.

Stop relying on Wiki. Do your own research. Read the old news stories and State of the Union addresses.

Oh, and BTW -
Obama did one major thing that both Clinton and Carter should be happy about.

He took the mantle of the worst American President in History (by a narrow margin).

- training medical personnel (the infected nurses are a disgrace to their hospital's procedures)
- purchasing equipment to deal with Ebola (better suits, gloves, etc...)

I'm curious how you are so positive that the hospital had appropriate procedures in place to handle an Ebola outbreak, before you jumped to shaming them. I would be absolutely shocked if they had these procedures outlined before the first case showed up, and I thought the first nurse to get it was the one that treated him initially. You kind of contradict yourself with the next point as well, since having appropriate procedures would imply having appropriate isolation equipment.

I hate to link CNN as a source, but they have some interesting comments from the nurse that are there.

From this article on the subject: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/20...

"While still uncommon, egg-freezing allows women to remove and store eggs when they are in their prime fertility window, which often overlaps with prime career-advancement years. The quality of a woman’s eggs declines as she gets older, putting many women in a bind about whether to have children in their 20s and 30s. Egg freezing allows women to stockpile healthy eggs while advancing their careers or waiting to meet a partner with whom they’d like to start a family.

But the procedure is expensive, costing approximately $10,000 per round, and many doctors recommend two rounds to ensure the best possible batch of cells. In general, health insurance plans don’t cover the elective procedure."

The last sentence is key. You can bet we are inching towards this $10,000 elective procedure being mandated by American health insurance, which means men will be the ones paying for it through taxes as demonstrated here:

http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/1...

The sheer fact Apple and facebook are doing this is a "slippery slope". Give feminists an inch, and they will take a mile, and then blame you for not giving two miles. And the idea of giving $10,000 to a man to start a family? Nahhhhhhhh.

If a couple decides to delay having kids and takes advantage of this benefit, doesn't the husband (a male most likely) save $10,000 as well?

And last I checked, women were taxpayers too. ;)

From this article on the subject:
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/20...

"While still uncommon, egg-freezing allows women to remove and store eggs when they are in their prime fertility window, which often overlaps with prime career-advancement years. The quality of a woman’s eggs declines as she gets older, putting many women in a bind about whether to have children in their 20s and 30s. Egg freezing allows women to stockpile healthy eggs while advancing their careers or waiting to meet a partner with whom they’d like to start a family.

But the procedure is expensive, costing approximately $10,000 per round, and many doctors recommend two rounds to ensure the best possible batch of cells. In general, health insurance plans don’t cover the elective procedure."

The last sentence is key. You can bet we are inching towards this $10,000 elective procedure being mandated by American health insurance, which means men will be the ones paying for it through taxes as demonstrated here:

http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/1...

The sheer fact Apple and facebook are doing this is a "slippery slope". Give feminists an inch, and they will take a mile, and then blame you for not giving two miles. And the idea of giving $10,000 to a man to start a family? Nahhhhhhhh.

A) I don't disagree with your training statements. I agree the CDC has not handled this the way it should have.

B) When you have been notified about ebola and specific countries, and are in health care, it behooves you to at least learn something about it. That's the difference between having a "job" and a "career". Apparently this knowledge is no longer being taught, that in a career you keep learning and need to stay up to date.

Then when you get a patient like Duncan, you at least realize that he might have ebola and that this means you better refresh your procedures since a good number of health workers in the affected countries have been infected and died from treating patients with this disease. One of the more telling quotes from one of the interviews with staff at this hospital was that they "didn't have protocols on how to deal with the deadly virus" You can also tell by the Nurses national union rep confirming that it appears these protocols are lacking in the entire country. This is obviously not true, as there are at least 4 hospitals as designated by the CDC that are ready for these cases. The CDC problem is they should have quarantined and moved the patients to one of these ready and qualified hospitals instead of letting unprepared institutions attempt to get up to speed while under fire. Having a checklist handed to you to follow while under the gun is bound to have lapses compared to people that train under those checklists. But, we could go on and on about failures in hindsight and lay blame all around, but these initial steps would have significantly reduced risk with little effort.

Editor's note: Laura Kahn is the author of Who's in Charge? Leadership during epidemics, bioterror attacks, and other public health crises.

This article is advertising for a book. The only prompt on the question of who is a brief "This might explain why the question, âoeWhoâ(TM)s in charge?â is inevitably asked after failures in response to public health crises." And that question is a link to CNN asking the question. And it is answered there:

It's a partnership between the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and state and local governments where an Ebola case occurs, said CDC Director Tom Frieden.

But local officials ultimately are in charge of each case, he said.

The linked article at thebulletin.org is tilting towards using this to push for universal insurance/healthcare, not even remotely pushing for a universal dictator like you claim. Most importantly, there is no support for the claim "The US Constitution ... places responsibility for public health squarely on the shoulders of local and state political leaders." This is frequently argued, but it relies on interpretations of phrases like "provide for" and "general welfare".

The article is clearly written for a specific audience, one that is impressed by the number of hyperlinks without reading what is linked. Blame the author, and blame the idiots who buy her horseshit. But mostly blame yourself for inferring something that isn't really there. OP cherry picked bits of the article to create something that it seems even the author didn't mean to convey.

It was covered a lot at the time, and they even had hearings to follow-up, and hearings about the hearings. There were congressional hearings to discuss if the hearings were themselves illegal because of how they were targeting and proposing to target Muslim-Americans, and hearings to discuss the response of Muslim-Americans to the hearings about the civil rights of Muslim-Americans and their status as an internal threat to the security of the nation.

It's funny looking back at news articles, at clips of the hearings, at a brief few minutes stolen here and there. At times, it looks quite tame. Watching them actually occur was ... disturbing. After a few minutes, I was already waiting for the ghost of FDR to appear and tell everyone to just throw those brown-skinned suicide bombers into the concentration camps with the Japs and Krauts.

We talk about this once great nation; I wonder if it was ever great.

Add Google the the list

I've become accustomed to an ever-growing list of companies someone somewhere thinks I'm beholden to. Years ago there was speculation in the Groklaw discussion forum about Apple paying me and earlier this year an Apple blog referred to speculation elsewhere on the Internet (and supposedly at Apple HQ in Cupertino) about an affiliation with the Android camp. I've addressed the disclosure question in this part of the discussion. I take it as a great compliment that opposing camps (Apple fans on the one hand, Android/open source fans on the other hand) simultaneously allege a conflict of interest.

I know that I only write what I believe in. There was a time when Apple and Microsoft had scored a number of (temporary) wins in court against Android, but then came a time when most of those wins eroded (patents got invalidated etc.) and when whatever little was left turned out not to be forceful, so I had to adjust my position because anything less would have been unreasonable. At the beginning of this month I published my analysis of what happened to 222 smartphone patent assertions (most of them against Android) by Apple, Microsoft and three other major litigants, with less than 10% having proved to have merit. The facts speak for themselves.

The most absurd thing is, however, that people still say Groklaw proved me wrong on the Oracle case when the current state of affairs is that the appeals court threw out Judge Alsup's grossly erroneous non-copyrightability ruling for reasons my blog had already explained years ago. Even my toughest critics would have to acknowledge that I was right (and they and Groklaw were wrong) if only they had a scintilla of rationality.

Cities with plumbing are bad? We should just all be squatting in the bush, that will show climate change who's boss! http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/20/...

Italy - Let's see, that's the country where geoscientists were convicted of manslaughter for failing to predict an earthquake.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/23/...
I'm not sure how anyone can maintain a rigorous scientific practice, under a system such as that.

Eric Schmidt is a hypocrite who said that exactly because his company make money on selling people's information.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/0...

Don't take naked pictures of yourself with an Internet-connected device. Don't transmit naked pictures of yourself through others' networks and store them on others' servers.

The victims did something stupid. Had they not done something stupid, they wouldn't be victims.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/13/...

In all fairness, they're only attacking *white* male masculinity. If you're black or brown, you can get caught beating your wife in an elevator or raping a bunch of kids, and the liberal faggot PC press will just blame the white male head of the NFL for it and the evil white police who didn't arrest you.

Oh so he's like the Marriott hotel chain which puts pine tar on coal to create "alternative fuel" in order to get tax breaks to offset their hotel chain losses?

http://money.cnn.com/2003/05/0...

SolarCity? The Gigafactory (which hasn't even been built yet)? Tesla?

The common denominator in all these businesses: tiny market share.

And the iPhone, iPad, iPod? Huge market share.

So, I guess Musk is a genius at making stuff nobody wants.

Tesla Motors, Inc.'s Demand Is Growing Faster Than Production

Model S has been an enormous success. Not only has the all-electric luxury sedan been outselling all comparably priced cars in North America in 2013, but Tesla is expecting sales to increase by more than 50% this year. Most surprising of all, however, is that Tesla is achieving this without spending any money on advertising.

People want the car, but most people can't afford it and Tesla still can't build the car fast enough to keep up with demand. But I suspect you knew that. You also probably know that consumer reports is calling the Tesla Model S the best car it has ever tested. The Gigfactory is part of the plan to price the Model 3 such that the middle class can afford it.

And you forgot to mention SpaceX which has single handily brought commercial satellite launches to the US. And supplies cargo missions to the ISS. And just won a bid for commercial crew to transport astronauts to the ISS. And have a launch manifest with over 40 launches on it worth over $4 billion dollars. In other words, SpaceX is in demand.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/27/...
Assuming this is honest, it seems amazing. Mortality rate down to 13%. When you're talking epidemic, throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks seems like the only way to do it. You think they have problems getting people to go to the hospital now, imagine how hard it would be if word went around that you might wind up in a control group?

I have two pasports, as do many people. http://edition.cnn.com/2012/07...

It is nearly impossible to estimate how many U.S. citizens have dual -- or even triple -- citizenships, says Michael A. Olivas, an immigration professor at the University of Houston Law Center. [...] The number is likely well over 1 million, he says, and is probably several times that.

So, I can use one passport to go in and out of Cuba, Africa, Iraq, or wherever, and use the US passport for going in and out of the USA. How would they track that?

They can't even track a single US person with a single US passport. I took a trip to North Korea earlier this year. My father is an immigration inspector and looked at my record. According to the US government, I had a pleasant 10 days in Beijing.

It is nearly impossible to estimate how many U.S. citizens have dual -- or even triple -- citizenships, says Michael A. Olivas, an immigration professor at the University of Houston Law Center.
[...]
The number is likely well over 1 million, he says, and is probably several times that.

So, I can use one passport to go in and out of Cuba, Africa, Iraq, or wherever, and use the US passport for going in and out of the USA. How would they track that?

According to the alert on CNN, he has just died from Ebola.

Why are Korea, Japan, most of Europe, etc. not grappling with this same issue?

Well, one theory is that the U. S. government doesn't regulate enough.

[Robert] Faris, of the Berkman Center, said no one society has a stronger appetite for Internet connectivity than another. Korea's government simply has whetted that appetite, and provided the incentives to make high-speed connections accessible to a large segment of society.

Political culture has more to do with it, he said.

"The United States is a more litigious culture than others, and the power of the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] to regulate is not as strong here as it is in other countries," which means its less likely that the U.S. will pass policies to promote the growth of ultra-fast broadband.

But "regretfully, that information was not fully communicated throughout the full team," said Dr. Mark Lester, executive vice president of Texas Health Resources.
Duncan was sent home with painkillers and antibiotics, only to return in worse condition on September 28. That's when he was isolated.
"It was a mistake. They dropped the ball," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said of the miscommunication at the hospital.
"You don't want to pile on them, but hopefully this will never happen again. ... The CDC has been vigorously emphasizing the need for a travel history."
Gupta said this mishap doesn't make sense.
"A nurse did ask the question, and he did respond that he was in Liberia, and that wasn't transmitted to people who were in charge of his care," he said. "There's no excuse for this."
And one of Duncan's friends said he was the one who contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with concerns that the hospital wasn't moving quickly enough after Duncan's second hospital visit.
But the hospital said the patient's condition "did not warrant admission" last week.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/02/...

"Didn't warrant admission" AKA "He wasnt sick enough for anyone to care, and we were to stupid to realize just how dangerous the situation could be." Heads need to roll for this.

Is this a joke? I now need a Microsoft "Live" account to follow articles linked to by Slashdot?

I mean searching for 35000 walruses on google only provides about 2million hits the top one not being msn's sorry attempt at a failing portal.

Why not link to CNN or any of the other sites running the article. I can't believe I'm going to say this but why not link to someone's blog covering it?

Like this?
Or this?
Or maybe this?

Ya...The Google is a great tool.

Funny how Libya under Ghadaffi got a get out of jail free card

It was not "free". In order to "get out of jail", Qaddafi had to acknowledge Libya being behind the Lockerbie bombing, and pay restitution to the victims' kin. That was, what was demanded of him and he complied (shortly after seeing Saddam Hussein being pulled from a hiding hole).

There was no other "beef" with him — unlike Iran, Libya did not seek nuclear weapons, nor was it providing anything better than "moral" support to any other terrorists.

That Obama — eager to show, that the sophisticated progressives can fight wars better, than the oil-thirsty KKKonservatives — chose to attack Mr. Ghadaffi anyway, was shameful treachery, which is bound to make any future "conversions" of foreign tyrants that much harder...

• The tax haven in the heart of Britain
• City banks ‘cheat’ Europe in €600m tax avoidance trading scheme
• How Tax Havens Stole Your Money
• The Missing $20 Trillion

Ah, yes, the big, bad UNION .

Yes, them. Labor unions are nothing but monopolies (or wanna-be monopolies), whose sole official purpose is maintaining and increasing the prices, their members can charge. As such, they ought to be treated to the anti-monopoly laws as well as, when the members break the law (for the union's sake) with the federal RICO law — as racketeer-influenced and corrupt organizations — rather than have each beating, shooting, or property destruction treated as isolated crimes committed by individual members on their own.

On top of it, any union, whose connection to the bona-fide crime is proven (even if it is just a single union official), must be disbanded automatically and immediately — the innocent members, who wish to unionize again, can do so under a new name later.

Both are doing it for profit for the companies and directly against the interest of their own employees.

They do. But they've grown to become that way naturally — not by using the law to force others to join them, as the unions are legally empowered to do.

What about the collusion among tech companies to not hire each other's employees?

Such collusions — if they are legal to begin with — are not supported by the existing law. Very much unlike the unionization — whereby a group of employees may vote to "unionize" a particular workplace and then they get to force other employees to join their union as well as prevent the employer from hiring outside of the union.

Sure, people ought to be free to associate with each other. But labor unions have much more law on their side, than a church club or a bowling league. And that just should not be the case...

I'm buying stock in companies that manufacture noise cancellation headphones. Last thing I want is someone in close proximity talking on a phone.

They cancel noise - low frequency noise. They don't cancel voice. In a noisy plane, you can hear people better, especially the higher pitched ones, though every frequency is quieter.

Before buying stock in something like Bose, you should actually buy the headphones and see how they work. Then again, you can't buy those shares anyway.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/2...

So your option is investing in Sony and their digital noise canceling headphones. Those I don't own, so maybe they cancel voice too.

http://store.sony.com/digital-...

Porn shrinks your brain

Lack of sleep shrinks your brain

Multi-tasking shrinks your brain

Religion shrinks your brain

Fat shrinks your brain

Elevated Blood Sugar shrinks your brain

Stress shrinks your brain

Aging shrinks your brain

Alcohol shrinks your brain

Vegetarianism shrinks your brain

Type 2 diabetes shrinks your Brain

Cell phones shrink your brain

I think medical fear mongering is shrinking our brains.

And yes, I did search for "Climate Change is shrinking our brains." No hits. So there you go MSM; a perfectly good theme that no one has used yet.

I'll grind them in my garbage disposal and wash them down my drain.

Seattle provides separate bins for compostables. The problem is that many people are just not using them and still putting compostables in the regular trash.

I can't imagine that food wastes comprise that large of a percentage of residential waste

According to this compostables are 30% of what is still in the garbage. Compostables in landfills also produce methane which is a greenhouse gas.

There's a great idea, let's put a highly infectious virus with a 50% kill rate into a hospital and not quarantine those known to be infected.

And note that even in the US, about 75,000 people a year die from infections they acquire in hospitals, and that's just pneumonia, C. difficile, MRSA, and other things much less scary that Ebola, which you can get from touching something with just a few virus particles in it. I think the people who are claiming Ebola is only a problem in Africa due to ignorance and substandard medical care are fooling themselves: if it gets to the U.S., the hospitals here are unlikely to perform up to the standards required.

Plus, every new infection means more chances for Ebola to mutate, possibly into an airborne form.