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When I saw their The 80's called and they want their store back commercial, I thought it was pretty funny and clever, but I also thought that the real problem is that they should go back to their 80's version. I recently needed to replace some blown-out capacitors in an LCD TV so I went to "The Shack". The selection they had was pretty pathetic and not what I needed. Thinking maybe it was just this store, I went to another one (both stores not located inside of a mall) and they had the exact same electronic components cabinet with the same measly selection of capacitors. It was disappointing because I used to enjoy going there in the 70's through 90's (except when they used to hound you for your address every time you wanted to buy a stupid fucking watch battery). I think I still have my battery club membership card stuck in a drawer somewhere.

I am not a bit coin fan boy by any stretch. I have no vested interest in it whatsoever. From a cultural perspective I find the phenomenon fascinating and I follow it closely along those lines. The government has been kicked from behind enough that I would not put it past them to come up with multiple projections for how the bitcoin situation could play out over a long time period. The US Government has been short sighted in the past, I think they have learned and if just one projection is negative, they will say fuck it lets bring it down now just in case. In case you have been sleeping under a rock, the United States government is beyond out of control and it's only getting more extreme.

This lawmaker wants it banned

Seems here that the government is over all apprehensive about it

Further Googling reveals we are seeing an about face from this article.

At least we may see some form of sensible regulation. even if not 100% official

I apologize if I find it silly that you are saying that water is more harmful (Stalin, no less) than diet pills that can kill you.

In fact, in consideration to the above link, I think Homeopathic diet pills are relatively safe and should be sold everywhere.

Forbes and WSJ pointed this out a couple of years ago:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/re...

If you actually look at how much work is done and actual years worked (not just age) etc. the gap disappears. Actually, according to the summary here there *is* a gap as women get paid more. I'm sure the feminists and looney lefters will want to fix this new problem. Not.

the problem now is that we have been ruled by the mob of democracy for too long

Bullcrap. When was the last time the "mob" actually prevailed over the corporate oligarchs? (I'll grant you some citizens referenda on pot legalization, etc., but other than that it's been straight down the line... what's good for Big (Corporate) Brother is what's best for America).

Stop blaming 'corporations', start blaming voters.

Oh, I still have plenty of blame for the voters who keep electing these clowns, but at least they are actually human and therefore I hold out some hope for their improvement. But corporations are not people, my friend.

Nor are they merely "groups of people" as you contend. They are more like programs or automatons... whose only "soul" is their so-called "fiduciary responsibility" to maximize profits for their shareholders (who, by the way, are mostly other corporations and not The People). Perhaps that's why there's a higher proportion of psychopaths among corporate CEOs than the general population...??

allow the state to force a healthcare system on you that they refuse to succomb to themselves?

Although I'm a tax-paying, regular-voting "citizen" of Iowa, I have been "residing" in Taiwan for a long time. Thus, I enjoy the benefits of an awesome single-payer, mixed-implementation healthcare system. As a business owner, I pay about $50/mo for my personal insurance, and pay about $20~25/mo per employee. It's not a perfect system by any stretch, but it beats the SHIT out of the USA, where even 20 years ago, as a healthy 30-year-old, I was paying over $200/mo for a lower grade of coverage.

Do I think the current "Obama-Care" compromise sucks? Yes, definitely. I would MUCH rather have gone with a single-payer system such as Medicare Buy-In, but alas, our "hope & change" president didn't have the stones for that fight.

Dude. 'Richard Wolff talks about "The Shape of a Post-Capitalist Future,"'. Are you serious?

Completely. I don't agree with everything he says, but I think capitalism has "run its course" and it's time to find a better paradigm, because CLEARLY (based on the last few years) this system has started to show its weaknesses. I think it goes without saying that "we can do better" than this, and I think Mr. Wolff has some useful ideas toward this end.

This guy invented the microprocessor, holds over 70 patents, is a self made millionaire (maybe billionaire) and has successfully sued the state of California for nearly $400 million because they tried to extort taxes he didn't owe out of him. So far, everything he's done relating to tech has been righteous imo, let's cut him some slack.

http://www.forbes.com/2008/08/...

The NCPPR wasn't trying to get Tim Cook riled up....they were trying to make millions of stockholders aware that Al Gore, whom both the left and right recognize as a nutjob, is the board member driving some weird decisions at Apple, and that Tim is backing him.

That's a lot of nutjob conspiracy accusations without any evidence there. Dell has green initiatives, and I can without a doubt say Al Gore has nothing to do with them.

Al doesn't know the first thing about computers. And he's on the board of directors at Apple.

Dina Dublon knows nothing about software yet she's on the board of Microsoft. I daresay, most of IBM's board knows nothing about IT services. Having technical knowledge about a company's products isn't a requisite for most boards.

And he's working (and succeeding) at driving Apple board discussions away from how to make computing devices and into "how to fight climate change." He's shifting the company away from what they're good at into something new, and political.

Unless you are present and have firsthand knowledge of the Gore's interaction with Apple, you can't claim this.

"Hey! You guys hired Lisa, the former head of the EPA to be a decision maker at Apple. What sense does that make? What qualifications does she have to make decisions for a tech company?"

A simple Google search and Apple's announcement shows you that she's in charge of Apple's environmental programs. I would think that her job at the Environmental Protection Agency would qualify her for such a position.

Not really, no. Hollywood rarely lobbies in favor of republicans, and the few it does aren't ever in the white house.

Chris Dodd (former US Senator and now MPAA lobbyist) once openly threatened to switch sides if he didn't get his way.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/er...
http://www.foxnews.com/politic...

That or find tiny gold particles in the bottom of a LENR device....

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ma...

Curious how this turns out, hate to see the billions going to the hot fusion budget go poof...

The humanity !!! LOL

How did it go to hell? It looks like the market price barely had a blip. And that's *despite* Forbes and others declaring it dead.

I've an idea. Let's look at the countries who have the happiest populations, and do what they do.

So who’s the happiest? As has been the case the past five years, that distinction goes to countries that enjoy peace, freedom, good healthcare, quality education, a functioning political system and plenty of opportunity: Norway, Sweden, Canada and New Zealand.

So capitalism, tempered with socialism. The strength of capitalism is that customers flock to the best products, and others have incentives to create them. Its biggest weakness is that a small advantage can be leveraged to a strong market position, making them successful not because they're good, but because they have too much power to dictate the market. Similarly unchecked capitalism means the wealthy use that power and money to make themselves wealthier still at everyone else's expense by rewriting the rules that benefit themselves at the direct cost of the rest.

Socialism - i.e. good public healthcare, good schools, a fair and accessible political system that works for all, not the few, a social safety net, economic regulation etc etc paid for by redistributive taxation ameliorates the rawer edge of a capitalist system, and means many have the opportunity to be happy, not just the people who lucked into being at the very top. Taken too far it can impede or even punish innovation, and there's always the risk that the people dictating who gets what become the ones who get the most.

So a hybrid system it is.

But no matter the system label, if it allows a small group to exercise all the power (religious-run states, the leaders of the only allowed political party, military dictatorships, a country run by the most wealthy) then it will be a bad system where the vast majority suffer, to serve those at the top.

I this was an interesting article. It touches a little bit on the day to day practical reasons people are using BTC. Will it ever settle down to the point where these uses are practical enough to see wider adoption? I don't know.

Even better, when you spend it on the rich, it trickles down.

Ah, the "trickle down" meme. That's a dishonest meme... what actual "trickle-down economics" means is something else, and there is no one in either party who actually believes that the Government should give money to the rich so it will "trickle down" to the poor.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeleef/2013/12/06/trickle-down-economics-the-most-destructive-phrase-of-all-time/

Bullshit, you're repeating right wing speech without knowing the facts (or you do?).
Maduro has won elections least that a year ago, how could you ever think that he is a dictator?
They have a very clean election system..

See some hard numbers by yourself on how the country was transformed the las 14 years.
Your problem people is news media, the support corporation's power and misinform.
Opposition in Venezuela has tried everything, they have lost elections, failed a coup l'etat and now they try to destabilize the gov.

he has underestimated the way the rich and the US are trying to sabotage his policy.

Of course it's somebody else's fault, preferably the US. I mean, it's just not possible that Chavez and then Maduro were running a terribly unsustainable economic model where they got very popular by subsidizing consumer goods with massive oil profits and then as soon as oil prices went down the country was exposed to the real economic world, is it?

Here's a pretty good explanation of the situation economically.

"Fiat currency only works as well are all those making use of it agree on its value."

There. FTFY. Bitcoin is not a fiat currency. It is a commodity. It has an "intrinsic" value, which is not subject to opinion.

Not sure what bitcoin has to do with GP's post, but since you brought it up...

While a commodity can be used as currency, commodities always have uses outside of their value as currencies. Bitcoin does not share this property. A bitcoin is nothing more than a numerical balance in a distributed triple entry ledger.

But if you can tell me what you can do with a bitcoin other than spend it (transfer the ledger balance from one account to another), I'd be willing to change my mind. :-)

ps - All Money is Fiat Money

Except Google is selectively picking areas based on maximising profits rather than providing universal access so it's the same problem. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jo...

Comcast wants to selectively serve areas and be the pipe + content provider. Google wants to selectively serve areas and is a pipe + content provider. Sorry but tell me again where the improvement is?

The problem is broadband in the US is bad enough that too many people are willing to accept one bad deal to avoid another.

I think you got that backwards. Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh are, and have been, consistently at top of "most wired cities" lists.
http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/...

Even if I don't really consider Musk specifically very idle, I would certainly agree. We are still tied to the capitalist mode of production where it is the few who own the means of production and the majority who has to do the actual work in order to enrich these few individuals. It's a matter of democracy really, if we really want to democracy then a burgeouis "democracy" cannot be the endpoint, simply because it does not adequately represent the people. Those truly in power are those who own the means of production, and until the people truly controls the means of production, we cannot claim to have democracy. Working hard and earning money is perfectly fine, but there's simply no way for any individuals to work so hard that they themselves would be entitled to such a large swath of the wealth in the world. Consider that the 85 most wealthy individuals own as much as the 3.5 *billion* poorest people in the world [1]. This is not wealth obtained from hard work, this is wealth obtained through ruthless exploitation of the working class, worldwide.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/la...

Personally, I think any TSA employee in charge of TSA procedures needs to go through said procedure/screening every day before work.

Actually, they need to be fired and replaced by people with proper risk management training, as opposed to risk avoidance.

Risk Avoidance: Do everything in your power to prevent some risk, no matter the cost Risk Management: Assess the risk, consider the liklihood of the risk, the damage it will cost if it happens, then look at mitigations, how likely they are to work, how much they'll cost, etc... And make the cheapest decision. IE if on average the mitigation will prevent more loss than it costs, you impliment it. Otherwise you just accept the risk.

I agree with you in principle, however, this ignores how politics have played into the equation. What made me realize this was when the TSA proposed a change to the rules to allow small knives (up to 2.36") on planes again. At the time, this seemed like an exercise in proper risk management to me. However, there was an uproar among citizens and flight attendants. For (what appears to be) strictly political reasons, these proposed changes were cancelled.

It seems that the public suffers from a strange dichotomy where many of us are critical of security theater, but we still want security theater. Many want to believe that the government offers a great big security blanket that will never let anything bad happen to us. I'm sure that you and I know that there is no such thing, and the cost of this illusion is extremely high (both financial and to that of liberty).

Ugh.

"Aristotle was the first to state that inequality triggers a revolution and that was certainly the case during the French Revolution, when onerous taxes on the lower and middle classes enhanced the lives of the wealthiest aristocrats." - Forbes blogger

So, researchers have noticed that when wealth distribution gets skewed enough, the poor bust out their trusty old pitchforks and torches. And the USA is getting frighteningly close to that point. Perhaps you're right that how rich the rich get should be no of our business. However, reality suggests that at some point, we make it our business, right or wrong. And then heads start rolling. If you think that since today's aristocracy is composed of CEOs instead of nobles they will be safe from the rioting masses, you haven't done a good job convincing me. If you think the average starving person will forgive the Walton family for hoarding billions of dollars simply because they "earned it" by failing to pay their workers a living wage, you have an amusing understanding of human nature. The average starving person sees no distinction between such "earning" and onerous taxation, as they both have the effect of pillaging society's coffers for the satisfaction of personal greed.

Also, to describe Mugabe as a "leftist" makes about as much sense as talking about "far-right" Somalia. I don't remember the left advocating for rigging elections, prosecuting gays, the abandonment of education, criminalization of inflation, or printing of money like it was newspapers. If you think his land redistribution programs (which would only be leftist if confiscated land was distributed equitably, and not disproportionately to Mugabe loyalists) are what define his reign, you haven't been paying attention.

It will never happen. That would raise the BOM for each vehicle by at least $0.20, possibly as much as $0.40 for redundant memory which would only ever be used for a few minutes out of the car's lifetime. Do you think that car manufacturers are made of money?

If only there was just one car manufacturer that was willing to spend that extra cash to make a superior product, and then people lined up to buy that superior product even though it cost more. That could then serve as proof-by-example to the other auto companies that there is profit to be made by improving quality as well as by reducing cost.

I don't expect that $16.5B worth of facebook stock will be worth much in another couple years.

Quick glance I thing 3 Billion in stock, and if the merger fails 1 Billion in Facebook Class A common stock
http://www.forbes.com/sites/br...

I hope Facebook fails as well, I don't wish to be forced into a facebook account to to complete another company's (Samsung) setup.
SamSung says it's much easier to use a HDTV if you have a Facebook account - this is a HDTV that monitors your every move (channel wise),
it also has the ability for a web cam for gestures, Their ToS and PrivacyPolicy reads like a Mark Zuckerberg wet dream.
http://www.samsung.com/us/comm...

Jan Koum picked a meaningful spot to sign the $19 billion deal to sell his company WhatsApp to Facebook earlier today. Koum, cofounder Brian Acton and venture capitalist Jim Goetz of Sequoia drove a few blocks from WhatsApp’s discreet headquarters in Mountain View to a disused white building across the railroad tracks, the former North County Social Services office where Koum, 37, once stood in line to collect food stamps.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/pa...

> Did YouTube ever positively contribute to Google's bottom line?

Google bought youtube for about 1.6 Billion

Youtube annual revenue has been over that pricepoint for a few years. CPM on video has always been in dollars, not cents. CPAs frequently pass $10. With up to 3 ads per video, you can understand how google justified the first payments to content providers.

Ballpark numbers:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ti...

You seem ridiculously pessimistic for someone who hasn't done any research.

I can't speak to the accuracy of historic weather data or modern weather models, but I can say this:

Global Warming / Climate Change (pick one, please) alarmists do themselves an incredible amount of damage when they do the following:

1. Grossly exaggerate predictions and base everything on the worst case they can find.
2. Manipulate charts to make changes look far more significant than they really are.
3. Instantly ridicule anyone who disagrees with them on anything, even if that disagreement is valid.

I'd say that, by your use of the pejorative term "alarmist", you yourself have already violated your own rule #3. Let's see how you fare on the other 2.

Let's say for the sake of argument that all of the predictions from these weather models are 100% accurate, all of the research and data is correct, and that the climate is indeed warming because of CO2 emissions, and that the climate will warm 5 Celsius degrees in the next 200 years. Let's pretend that the science is completely perfect.

Something which is NEVER claimed by anyone researching or participating in climate science, but for the sake of argument, ok.

Even if all of that is true, you will find a lot of people who won't even bother listening because they remember crazy predictions like "New York city will be underwater in 20 years!" and "We're all going to be cannibals! Cannibals, I say!"

Ahh, here we are. A gross violation of your first rule. You are basing your judgment of so-called "alarmists" on the worst cases you can find. I don't know of any serious climate scientist or climate change / AGW adherent who says any of these things or, if said, are taken out of context by someone to prove the opposite. Yes, there are some nutjobs who should rightly be called "alarmists", and they say some pretty outlandish and stupid things, but they are far in the minority. What they say shouldn't have any impact on the science or anyone's perception of it. They are simply noise in the signal, and are pretty easily eliminated by even a modicum of critical thinking and a little bit of research.

Do you see why so many people don't listen to those who are trying to push human-caused climate change?

Politics needs to be taken out of the equation. Completely. Everything needs to be 100% transparent. The science needs to be broken down in ways the average person can understand. Even if that happens, it will be decades before the damage the global warming alarmists have caused can be reversed.

I hate to break it to you, but real AGW/CC climate science adherents or "climate hawks" don't take the nutjobs seriously, either. The problem is in terms of where you get your information on the subject. Politics are inserted into the equation by people with an agenda. Understand who is talking, and what their goals/motivations are for telling you the things you are hearing from them, and seek out the source of their information. If they can't or won't provide it, then only take what they say with a heavy dose of skepticism. Everything in climate science is open and accessible (more today than in the past, to be sure), and there are many sites which break down the hard science into more meaningful chunks which the lay person can consume at their leisure.

I think the damage that the "alarmists" (supposedly) have caused pales in comparison by far to what the well-monied climate contrarians have caused. We even see it in *this very article* by Spencer, who grossly violates your own Rule #2. It's easy to dismiss a nutjob statement that is very easy to source and check, like Ted Turner's noise. It is much harder to dismiss deceptions which are carefully

OF COURSE

Honestly paying a lot for hyped tech companies sure sounds like an excuse to avoid some type of taxes.... (e.g. capital expenditure)

As you say, cue the fawning Forbes ''analysis.''

The fact that Jan was on food stamps just a couple of years ago and now is worth something like 10 billion dollars on paper should say...something to all of the right wing assholes who hate on the poor for being shiftless losers, and who try to destroy the tiny little safety nets this country has left for people on the edge of starvation or homelessness.

As you say, cue the fawning Forbes ''analysis.''

The fact that Jan was on food stamps just a couple of years ago and now is worth something like 10 billion dollars on paper should say...something to all of the right wing assholes who hate on the poor for being shiftless losers, and who try to destroy the tiny little safety nets this country has left for people on the edge of starvation or homelessness.

A more interesting question is why Spencer never publishes any of his alleged massive critiques of AGW in peer reviewed journals.

There is a known problem there.

THICK ATMOSPHERE and Climategate and Scientific Journal Chicanery

Climate researcher and IPCC co-author Eduardo Zorita calls for Warmergate plumbers Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf to be barred from the IPCC process and muses on the “very troubling professional behavior” evident in those leaked emails:

I may confirm what has been written in other places: research in some areas of climate science has been and is full of machination, conspiracies, and collusion, as any reader can interpret from the CRU-files

I am also aware that in this thick atmosphere – and I am not speaking of greenhouse gases now – editors, reviewers and authors of alternative studies, analysis, interpretations, even based on the same data we have at our disposal, have been bullied and subtly blackmailed. In this atmosphere, Ph D students are often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the ‘politically correct picture’.

Climategate's Michael Mann Channels His Inner Palpatine

The Climategate emails reveal that when the scientist-activists saw skeptical scientists successfully calling public attention to such evidence, they went on a vicious attack, pulling strings to pressure universities and science journals to fire or blackball the skeptical scientists for presenting their competing theories and evidence. The Climategate emails also show Mann as one of the most aggressive warriors in the battle to publicly disparage and ruin the careers of scientists who disagree with his views on global warming.

For example, upset that Harvard University researchers were successfully arguing that solar variance rather than carbon dioxide emissions are the most likely primary cause of recent global temperature fluctuations, Mann sent out an email seeking to coordinate action to pressure Harvard to rebuke or discipline the researchers. “If someone has close ties w/ any individuals there [at Harvard] who might be in a position to actually get some action taken on this, I’d highly encourage pursuing this,” writes Mann to fellow scientist-activists.

The Climategate emails also reveal Mann recruiting investigative journalists to dig up dirt on scientist Steve McIntyre, who had called into questions Mann’s scientific theories.

There is plenty more if you dig into that instead of conspiracy theories about the "Koch brothers."

I can't speak to the accuracy of historic weather data or modern weather models, but I can say this:

Global Warming / Climate Change (pick one, please) alarmists do themselves an incredible amount of damage when they do the following:

1. Grossly exaggerate predictions and base everything on the worst case they can find.
2. Manipulate charts to make changes look far more significant than they really are.
3. Instantly ridicule anyone who disagrees with them on anything, even if that disagreement is valid.

Let's say for the sake of argument that all of the predictions from these weather models are 100% accurate, all of the research and data is correct, and that the climate is indeed warming because of CO2 emissions, and that the climate will warm 5 Celsius degrees in the next 200 years. Let's pretend that the science is completely perfect.

Even if all of that is true, you will find a lot of people who won't even bother listening because they remember crazy predictions like "New York city will be underwater in 20 years!" and "We're all going to be cannibals! Cannibals, I say!"

Do you see why so many people don't listen to those who are trying to push human-caused climate change?

Politics needs to be taken out of the equation. Completely. Everything needs to be 100% transparent. The science needs to be broken down in ways the average person can understand. Even if that happens, it will be decades before the damage the global warming alarmists have caused can be reversed.

There are several datasets that show a long term warming trend. 17 years is a clear attempt to cherry pick data as outlined in this Forbes article.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/pe...

Really, you can argue a bit about causation if you want, but at this point in time there is no credible argument about the actual trend in temperature. The idea that the earth is not warming is sheer poppycock.

($4B, really, who's counting fb stock?)

Brian Acton and Jan Koum.

everyone still thinks that dietary cholesterol regulation should be a high priority for health.

Well, they may still talk that way, but the prevalent treatment strategy has clearly shifted to drugs: "Nearly one in four adults age 45 and over already take pills like Lipitor and Zocor to manage their cholesterol levels and reduce the risk of heart disease." cite

So how has the GDP been growing steadily since Obama took office?

Oh yes, quite impressive. Obama likes to say he came in when the economy was "in freefall" from the Bush era. Okay, let's take that as true. Bush came into office at the peak of a huge boom and GDP growth averaged only 1.7% per year. Pretty bad, huh? Well, he was starting from a pretty high bar so it was hard to improve on that. But hey since Bush did such a shitty job from an already tougher to improve starting point it should be easy for Obama, starting from rock bottom, to move things upwards a bit. Hmm, what's that? Growth under Obama has only averaged 1.6%? What's astonishing is that government spending is designed to crank up GDP, yet despite the fact that the already high spending rate under Bush has been jacked up under Obama to rates not seen since the 90's the economy is still tanking faster than the Obama can spend.

How embarrassing for you. GDP growth probably isn't a number you want to bring up. I mean, unless you include the words "economic failure" in there somewhere. I sure as hell didn't vote for Bush, but even I miss him at this point. Fuck, I miss Jimmy Carter at this point. It's a fucking disaster.

Do more reading on the subject of the cost of the cost of electricity from wind power... Like the subsidies that are used to try to bring the cost down, higher grid level costs like Europe found out 10 years ago. There are LOTS of "hidden" costs in Wind power...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ch...

http://www.atinstitute.org/wp-...

China has given up on even trying to be agriculturally self-sufficient. They've more than doubled the amount of food they import from the US since 2008.

Meanwhile, we are far and away the world's biggest exporter of food. There's also the little matter of the massive scientific contributions we've made to agricultural output worldwide. Norman Borlaug alone saved over a billion lives with his work. You may want to deny this fact, but India doesn't, which is why they awarded him the Padma Vibhushan in 2006.

Without them, our toys are more expensive.

Without us, they starve to death by the millions.

And you know it.

Now, boy, what was that you were saying about dream worlds?

First worlders may think we are transitioning to a post-scarcity world, but the third world remains unconvinced, whether they are in SE Asia or Detroit. The question you should ask yourself is whether we are on the path toward "Children of Men" (less the issue of no children for 20 years) or "Star Trek" (less the warp drives).

Getting sick is your fault.
Your kids getting sick is your fault.
And all of the associated medical expenses are yours because you acted irresponsibly.

And those poor poor 1%'ers who work so hard while the rest of us just sit around have to be persecuted by the EPA, FDA and the rest of government because, after all, they are creating jobs and helping our economy. Who else is going to off-shore those jobs and pollute our drinking water? Not us! We're too lazy!

By the way, since there's a 1 to 1 correlation between hard work and wealth, does that mean Bill Gates worked NINE times harder than Tom Perkins? And that Bill gates worked 72,000 times harder than your typical millionaire?

And since Bill got so much richer and faster than Tom Perkins, I guess that makes Bill superior to Tom.

Tom Perkins is just a big mouth slacker and he should be lucky that he's not in Russia or Zimbabwe where the leadership can just take his wealth and if he has a problem with it, they'd declare him a traitor and put him in prison while he awaits execution.

So, he should shut up and pay a 95% income tax and 40% capital gains tax because he COULD be somewhere in Africa.

The real problem is the whole student loan system. Since most people are paying for college with unlimited-balance, government-guaranteed loans, colleges can charge whatever the hell they want and they know that everyone can afford it and they always get paid. Why does the cost of tuition rise so much faster than inflation? Because colleges suffer no consequences for raising tuition.

If you took away the unlimited aspect or the government-guarantee aspect, you'd see tuitions stabilize right quick. If Uncle Sam (or I guess Aunt Sallie, in this case) said, "Colleges, go ahead and charge whatever the hell you want, but we're only giving each student $15k/yr in loans, indexed to inflation," you'd see colleges implementing some cost controls. Likewise, if Sallie Mae said, "Colleges, we pay you when the student pays us, so better make things affordable, hmm?" same thing would happen.

But no, we have a bubble like the real estate bubble because everybody's buying with other people's money, so nobody cares what it costs.

Mod parent up. US higher education debt now totals more than a trillion dollars. And it's becoming more obvious with each passing semester that students are reliving the history of the dot com and property bubbles. Take something of value, build a story around it that exaggerates its fiscal value, find some sucker to finance it (US taxpayers are born every minute.) This proposed fix won't help. There are too many ways to game the system. We've already turned our state-funded universities into glorified trade schools, funneling most students into accounting, MBA or whatever students counselors perceive to have the shortest term ROI. Basic research suffers and paradoxically unemployable degrees are on the rise. Universities win as long as there is a warm body in a classroom seat. The proposed system might help in the short term by forcing the burden of unraveling this mess onto the most educated population, but in the long term it will punish higher education, reward those horribly narrow certificate factories, give further advantage to PhDs in India and China and force even more of our best and brightest to leave the country.

Or how about we fix the problem by cutting out all the bloat in our education costs?

http://articles.latimes.com/20...
http://online.wsj.com/news/art...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/pa...

Yeah, to put it in perspective it's less than 1/16th of a bankers bailout:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tr...
.

ROBERT BYRD 2002: We need a climate change strategy badly. Look at the kind of winter we've had here in Washington. One snow, three inches? What can we expect for the spring and summer seasons? What's going to happen to our crops, our livestock, our economy? This is serious. I've lived a long time, 84 years. Something's going wrong out there. I don't need a scientist to tell me that. We had better do something about it.

But he only makes policy decisions on taxes to support AGW, not a scientists. Lets check an article on the IPCC from their 2001 predictions.
Story
I would link the IPCC report the article was based on, but it was removed because it was completely wrong. The 2001 IPCC assessment said there would be less and less snowfall every year due to AGW.

So let me retort, if policy makers don't need scientists, and "your" scientists are wrong, why do I need any more than to point out the window to prove you wrong?

Not mentioned in the summary but in the article is that the merged company will get rid of 3 million customers willingly. In articles not linked but other ones, the reason is that the merged company wants to keep their share of the market to less than 30%. As others will mention, there are few areas where they overlap. I remember there was a re-alignment a few years back when Comcast replaced Time Warner in some markets and vice versa but they did not compete against each other.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/pe...

maybe you're looking at figures the same way that the government does...
- calculating unemployment by excluding those unemployed that have become discouraged and stopped looking for work
- calculating the cpi by excluding food and energy items

like most democrats and even some in the gop, president obama is a big government socialist... only the tea party, libertarian movements and independents are drumming up an ever increasing level of support for reducing government spending and powers back to that envisaged by the founding fathers.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/er...

I don't think that is even what this is about. I grew up in France and live in the US now. I do not think there were less credit card fraud there than here. (Though statistics disagree with me [1].) At the end of the day, the pin does not change much since most of the credit card fraud at remote transactions. And you use neither pin nor signature for them.

Every single transaction I reported as fraud were remote transactions. Often the result of a company charging me for somethign I did not agree on.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/ha...

"It's just as well," the Verizon spokesperson said, "It wasn't close to turning a profit, and that didn't even count the extra costs feeding the home info from all sensors to the NSA, whom we aren't even legally allowed to charge."

Are you kidding? The NSA (and other TLAs) get charged a *crapton* for siphoning data from private orgs: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ro...

This is why we need thorium reactors

Here's someone else who made many similar points to what I posted:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/he...

First, any employee who leaves IBM’s employment prior to December 15 for any reason other than a formal retirement will not receive any company match to his or her own 401(k) contributions for the entire year. Nada. IBM executives could fire someone on December 14 and the company would not have to pay out.

Second, all employees lose an entire year of the IBM match working for them in the investment sense. ...

As for 'harassment' I think you made the point for me:

In terms of dissuading potential employees, it's pretty clear at this point IBM has stopped caring about hiring *new* talent. In fact, their overall strategy could just as likely be about making people *want* to quit because that's cheaper than laying them off.

What conduct in the workplace constitutes 'making people want to quit'?