Slashdot Mirror

In California, we're never going to pay off the debt...

Say whaaa?..

And furthermore, a 'debt' is not something you pay off. It is a valuable commodity to trade on the open market and reap great profits in brokers commisions.

Anybody employed by a government agency is used to not only having the salary of their position public, but having their names and salaries published in major newspapers for everybody to read:

Example
Another
Another
Another
Another

I think we can all agree that the salaries of government positions should be public, but I'm not sure publishing actual people's names, positions, and salaries in a public database is ethical.

LOL
You are talking to people who feel their experience in software development, magically makes them into engineers (No Virginia "software engineering" is not engineering the same way creation science is not science) not only that they are experts in geophysics, hydraulics, climatology and fluid dynamics. All the while not even being able to parse the scientific method.

The same people who will fight water projects in a state like California that has a history of mega droughts
http://www.mercurynews.com/por...

Really its the sad result of letting society's failures teach the young.

Nut an increase in greenhouse gas is a problem
which you msy hsve noticed if you live in the west (drought)

The amount is way less howevere.

Humans are fueled by plants or animal protein that has recently been carbon in the atmosphere. Its not an addition to the amount of carbon that is around.

No need to call people a 'nut', especially when you are not informed.

The EPA recognized CO2 as a pollutant, but there are no limits on discharge, that is a key difference.

The west has had much more severe droughts in the last 1000 years than this one. It may be anthropogenic, but there is plenty of history to say it doesn't.

Also, the natural cycle of CO2 far exceeds the CO2 generated by anthropogenic sources, by more than a factor of 15. Look up carbon balance.

Thanks editors, for explaining it.

http://www.mercurynews.com/cri...

From the link above:
The technology in question [...] is a suitcase-sized device that mimics a cellphone tower to connect with all phones in a specific area. [...] Sheriff's officials said it will be used purely to locate the subject of an investigation since it can find a phone through walls, even if the owner isn't making a call.

Cost of giant desalination plant: $1 bil. So you could get 30 plants for the cost of the pipeline. http://www.mercurynews.com/sci...

Perhaps, instead of robots, they should look at fixing their leaky pipes (Bay Area loses billions of gallons to leaky pipes) or sending, so efficiently, most of their rainwater back into the ocean (How to fix California's drought problem) before they spend billions building desalination plants (Drinking the Pacific).

http://www.mercurynews.com/drought/ci_27070897/california-drought-worst-1-200-years-new-study "The last three years of drought were the most severe that California has experienced in at least 1,200 years, according to a new scientific study published Thursday."

I hope you're just being sarcastic, but in case you aren't

http://www.mercurynews.com/sci...
http://wattsupwiththat.com/201...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
http://news.nationalgeographic...

a five minute internet search for "California drought history" can point to the fact that California has had water issues for centuries (it can be said of any area as well), it had destroyed Native American Cities and entire empires long before European settlers arrived. A statement in the National Geographic article pretty well sums it up "Unfortunately, she notes, most of the state's infrastructure was designed and built during the 20th century, when the climate was unusually wet compared to previous centuries."

California is experiencing the worst drought (ever, perhaps)

Not according to science.

Through studies of tree rings, sediment and other natural evidence, researchers have documented multiple droughts in California that lasted 10 or 20 years in a row during the past 1,000 years -- compared to the mere three-year duration of the current dry spell. The two most severe megadroughts make the Dust Bowl of the 1930s look tame: a 240-year-long drought that started in 850 and, 50 years after the conclusion of that one, another that stretched at least 180 years.

http://www.mercurynews.com/sci...

Which of course makes me wonder why so many people feel it's important to claim otherwise.

Through studies of tree rings, sediment and other natural evidence, researchers have documented multiple droughts in California that lasted 10 or 20 years in a row during the past 1,000 years -- compared to the mere three-year duration of the current dry spell. The two most severe megadroughts make the Dust Bowl of the 1930s look tame: a 240-year-long drought that started in 850 and, 50 years after the conclusion of that one, another that stretched at least 180 years.

http://www.mercurynews.com/sci...

(The source seems to be E.R Cook et.al, Earth-Science reviews)

http://www.mercurynews.com/sci...

They are doing it.

This is nowhere near the worst drought in California's recorded history.

Through studies of tree rings, sediment and other natural evidence, researchers have documented multiple droughts in California that lasted 10 or 20 years in a row during the past 1,000 years -- compared to the mere three-year duration of the current dry spell. The two most severe megadroughts make the Dust Bowl of the 1930s look tame: a 240-year-long drought that started in 850 and, 50 years after the conclusion of that one, another that stretched at least 180 years.

Unless, of course, those proxies are unreliable.

http://www.mercurynews.com/sci...

Actually, the state legislature passed some bills to regulate the drilling of wells and the pumping of groundwater back in August.

Amusingly, people have been conserving water so much locally that the water utilities are actually running out of money, they say, to maintain infrastructure. The article barely touches on it, but the Santa Clara Water District (termed affectionately by a local columnist as the "Golden Spigot") doesn't exactly have a record of sound spending. Hopefully this will bite them on the ass.

California drought: Past dry periods have lasted more than 200 years, scientists say....

http://www.mercurynews.com/sci...

Different scientists, different answers. There is something for everyone.

CA has experienced droughts worse than this in the past.

News for ya, CA is mostly a desert.

More recently Public Defender Arrested While Defending Client and Video Shows Defense Attorney's Arrest Inside Courthouse. Obviously the police were way out of line and charges against the Attorney were dropped. I don't know if she will pursue the officers in court.

I've read about droughts of that magnitude in north america for years. I don't know how you've missed them. Here's another link.

http://www.mercurynews.com/sci...

"Through studies of tree rings, sediment and other natural evidence, researchers have documented multiple droughts in California that lasted 10 or 20 years in a row during the past 1,000 years -- compared to the mere three-year duration of the current dry spell. The two most severe megadroughts make the Dust Bowl of the 1930s look tame: a 240-year-long drought that started in 850 and, 50 years after the conclusion of that one, another that stretched at least 180 years."

The main jist of the articles I've read is that the population of california is unsustainable without desalinization which is expensive and extreme water conservation measures because california and nearby areas have regularly had droughts for over a hundred years going back to 10,000b.c..

As I said above, there are citations for the 300 year drought in the wiki article- just not for it being called "the great drought". The mercury article above however only refers to a 240 year period- followed by a 50 year break and then followed by another 180 year drought. The area was subject to droughts long before humans were common in the area.

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/...
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.c...
http://www.bizjournals.com/san...
http://www.naturalgasintel.com...
http://www.mercurynews.com/bus...

Comment on wage suppression is spot on. These fuckers are evil. There's an agenda here, like they know they can hire women at 76% the cost of a male.

Better than that, the latest data shows it's actually 62%. That's right, they can get 5 women of the same qualifications as 3 men. That's almost as good as hiring H1B's except there's no cap on the number of women... Hell, they get encouraged to do it!

http://www.mercurynews.com/bus...

Must be nice to be you. 49ers tickets =~ 2K http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_...

the solution looks costly but hardly unmanageable

According to this, the largest plant in the country costs about $1 billion and will be able to handle about 50 million gallons per day.

If you built $21 billion dollars worth of those plants, you get about 1 billion gallons per day of desalination capacity, which would take about 30 years to just to regenerate those 11 trillion gallons, not even considering what's needed to handle existing overconsumption.

Still manageable, but it's not a good short-term fix.

preeminent misogynist theory is that women are born with physiological differences that make them naturally less inclined toward the field

"The difference is, females in general are much more interested in what you can do with the technology, than with just the technology itself," says Harvey Mudd President Maria Klawe

It certainly doesn't take much of a leap of faith to agree with Barbara Ericson, a senior research scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, when she says that "Boys fall in love with computers as machines; girls see them as tools to do something else."

When the people actually doing something about getting girls into computer science say things like that, it certainly sounds like they believe girls aren't naturally inclined toward the field, at least not the way boys are.

(And why do you deny physiological differences? Are you a TERF?)

Already was taken to court. Yelp tactics are 'at most, hard bargaining' and not illegal, judge says.

You seem to be mistaken on that as well. http://www.mercurynews.com/bus...

Well, here ya go. I'm thinkin' prices for a decent California wine are going to spike for a while.

Well, another way to look at it is Californians have calculated the real cost.

You're suggesting that dozens of European and Asian countries where semiconductor manufacturing is growing are all run by morons, while California's ridiculous cast of politicians has figured out things perfectly?

Yes, and it's obvious that they have. The Los Angeles basin has gone from one of the most polluted regions in the world to relatively clean in 30 years, saving residents billions in health care costs. This is despite the basin being probably one of the worst places to build a city in terms of air quality: LA is basically a giant bowl that gets far less wind on any given day than most other similar cities. Compare to other cities around the world where pollution is a large and growing problem. Around here the only real remaining problem is the port, because we still have to cater to every other states' and countries' dirty, inefficient, leaky ships and trucks, and the water, because water politics have 150 years of bureaucracy weighing them down, and there remains a lot of complicated, expensive work to do to keep out gigantic ag industry satisfied.

About the only reason you'd want a FAB plant in your state that wasn't willing or able to comply with California's environmental laws is if you want to be able to boast about how you 'created more jobs' in the leadup to the next election, and didn't give a shit what the real cost to the state would be over the next 30 years.

You're suggesting that California politicians are acting out of concern over the fiscal health of the state 30 years from now? I haven't heard anything more ridiculous than that in a long time.

http://www.mercurynews.com/cal...

California politicians didn't have anything to do with the law; it was voter-initiated. The politicians are still as short-sighted as ever; they're the ones who negotiated the union contracts at around the same time that back-loaded so much in retirement benefits 30 years down the line without allocating any money to pay for it that the state nearly went bankrupt a few years ago. Voter initiatives cause a lot of headaches, especially for politicians who have to live with them, but it's largely because of that initiative system that California can boast that it's doing really well for itself, despite getting screwed by our conservative national government (the state only gets back about 50 cents in benefits and funding for every dollar paid in federal taxes; if the state seceded from the US we'd pay off our debts in a few years, but then the rest of the country would go bankrupt in about the same amount of time so nobody really wants that to happen.)

Well, another way to look at it is Californians have calculated the real cost.

You're suggesting that dozens of European and Asian countries where semiconductor manufacturing is growing are all run by morons, while California's ridiculous cast of politicians has figured out things perfectly?

About the only reason you'd want a FAB plant in your state that wasn't willing or able to comply with California's environmental laws is if you want to be able to boast about how you 'created more jobs' in the leadup to the next election, and didn't give a shit what the real cost to the state would be over the next 30 years.

You're suggesting that California politicians are acting out of concern over the fiscal health of the state 30 years from now? I haven't heard anything more ridiculous than that in a long time.

http://www.mercurynews.com/cal...

That's the rub, you have massive communities being built with no thought to infrastructural issues, like water, roads, education etc. The one thing that needs to be done to take care of long term water demand is desalinization plants. San Diego is now getting one. but that'll solve most domestic uses, large agrobusiness has relied on cheap water, and that's what's made the Imperial Valley and the San Joaquin valleys prosper, without access to it the agriculture will suffer. That's something California doesn't want and it'll push food prices higher in the US.

They are probably replacing a $2 a device worker with a $1 a device machine.

I am not so sure that that is the case. If a Chinese can assemble an iPhone in an hour, then this old news -- http://www.mercurynews.com/bus... -- would give some idea that the replacement is not that much different (think about maintenance cost). I believe it is more on the labor law issues (less headache). The law suit from "human" could be very expensive. So it would be much easier to have robots do the work instead of humans, so that they can no longer need to worry about how many hours a day each robot can work. They could simply swap a robot out if it breaks (no hospital cost, just maintenance).

You go to a developing country and tell them they're fine. They don't need development. They don't need electricity unlike all the developed countries.

And what is all the "suffering" you're talking about? You mean like New Orleans where all the politicians were too corrupt to build a couple of levees for a few tens of million dollars, even though engineers had warned them for decades in advance that the city will be flooded the next time cat 3 hurricanes comes along? Or do you mean hurricane Sandy that was a cat. 0 hurrican in New York and nobody was prepared, even though real cat.2 and cat. 3 hurricanes hit the city in 1938, 1896, 1869, 1821 and 1815 and nobody bothered preparing for the next time that would happen for the only reason that the last time was so long ago? Or do you mean hurricane Haiyan that was the third time the city of Tacloban was leveled by a hurricane, after 1898 and 1912? Do you mean the floods in Pakistan in 2010, that were lower than those of 1929? Or do you mean a couple of mild droughts that are the "worst" since the 1950ies, deliberately leaving out the dust bowl in the 1930ies? Or the droughts in California that ignore the geological record? Or do you mean the droughts on the atolls that weren't brought about by lack of rain, but by a three to fivefold increase of population (and thus water consumption) in the last 50 years?

What suffering do you mean?

Elon Musk "will partner with several companies besides Panasonic". http://www.mercurynews.com/bus... I seriously doubt that Panasonic and the several other companies involved would want to invest heavily into a factory that produces batteries primarily for Tesla. It's a win/win for anyone involved in this endevour. If they can actually bring raw, newly mined materials into one end and then pump batteries out the other, they can cut out a huge amount of the cost of purchasing and re-working the pre-manufactured components and materials.

> Apple's not that big - they don't have huge marketshare and all that.

Forget market share. In a growing market, it doesn't mean much. Look at market cap instead... Apple IS big. They grew by not just entering new markets, but creating new markets.

Apple sells a lot of computers and devices. The number of units shipped has consistently increased until recently. They haven't sold as many phones as Samsung, but they held their own pretty well against Samsung's juggernaut.

I find it odd that you would bring up pets.com from 14 years ago. Is there no better example of the waning importance of Silicon Valley?

This just underscores my point of how folks have been incorrectly predicting the decline and fall of SV for a long time now. Going out on a limb, IMHO, a lot of this is rooted in a desire to see SV taken down a notch. In other words, I believe such negative assessments are based more on emotion than any real evidence the bay area is slowing down. The failure of pets.com in 2000 might make for a sensational story, but it's unwise to write off the bay area as "a little bubble", "too confident" or "arrogant". To do so in 2000 would have meant missing out on things like the transformation of Apple, the ascension of Google, the success of startups like Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.

I've lived in both Austin as well as SV. Both places are great, but from a tech perspective, IMHO Austin doesn't hold a candle to SV. I just now googled some stats on VC funding in Austin vs SV. In Austin it surged from 81.7 million in Q1 2013 to 213.8 in Q1 2014. Not bad.

http://www.bizjournals.com/aus...

But this compares with 2.2 billion invested in Silicon Valley in Q1 2013 and 4.7 billion in Q1 2014 (or about 1/2 of the world-wide venture capital investments).

http://www.mercurynews.com/bus...

For good measure, I looked up VC stats for the entire state of Texas. In all of 2013, Texas got 1.3 billion. 50% went to Austin startups. This compares with 12.3 billion for Silicon Valley for 2013.

http://www.businessweek.com/ap...

There's a reason VCs choose to invest their money in bay area startups. They believe in the place...its past, present and future...and are willing to bet substantial amounts of money on it.

Chevron has a sizable industrial accident in a community.

At least we agree on this. :)

They take losses in it (insurance likely covers direct losses) and lose a contractor.

If Chevron was a privately owned little mom-and-pop operation and the "contractor" was their son-in-law I'd have some sympathy. But, in this case, it's hard to imagine that anyone with any real decision making power (that is, responsibility) suffered at all. Somehow I doubt the CEO of Chevron will put a picture of the deceased contractor's family on his desk as a permanent reminder to never let something like this happen again: for a company that size, a few human lives here and there are merely the cost of doing business.

I'm sure that wherever damages did occur, Chevron is on the hook and is likely paying up.

With a fire that burned for four days and the loss of life I'm pretty sure that the local government provided some services somewhere along the line.

The nearby residents had zero damages and weren't owed a thing.

I have a young nephew who, when he gets mad, runs around swinging his arms randomly hoping to "accidentally" hit someone. I suppose technically there's nothing wrong with his behavior because he's not guaranteed to succeed in hitting anyone and, even if he does, it's not "intentional". But real life isn't quite so simple and black and white: there's also this notion of negligent activity that puts others at risk.

Chevron is not getting off cheap or abdicating responsibility through a pizza giveaway.

Last year the CEO of Chevron got about $30 million in compensation. In a standard 2,000 hour work year (50 weeks at 40 hours/week), that works out to $15,000/hour or $250/minute (there was time when I thought lawyers who charged $250/hour had it good). Now, Chevron apparently gave away about 100 pizzas at a cost of $12 or so per pizza - for a total cost of about $1,200. So this pizza give-away is equivalent to just a bit less that 5 minutes of the CEO's time.

The situation is comparable to having a tall tree in your yard that falls over on your car. You don't owe your neighbor a pizza, but maybe you buy him dinner anyway just for giving him the jitters.

A better analogy would be that cut down a tree on your property without taking adequate safety precautions and it all goes horribly wrong and falls on a fedex delivery person who was trying to deliver a package to your house and your neigbor tries to give the delivery person CPR but the delivery person dies in your neighbor's arms - not too mention the tree almost fell on your neighbor's house which might have killed your neighbor's family. So you give your neighbor just one single penny to compensate for the distress and risk you caused - and walk away self-righteously feeling that you've given your neighbor far more compensation than your neighbor actually deserved.

From January 2012 through Nov. 30, 2012, there were approximately 1,732 cellphone related thefts reported in San Francisco out of a total of 3,487 robberies â" making 50% of all robberies cellphone related.

So in 11 months there were 1732 cellphone thefts in San Francisco, or an annual rate of 1889 thefts/year.

In 2012 there were 5339 automobile thefts in San Francisco. So where's the legislation requiring a remote kill switch on all cars to render them inoperable, to discourage theft?

My question is what does Google, in the current form, expect the glasses to be used for. In the current incarnation, it is the equivalent of wearing mirrors on the top of your shoes. Releasing them without some alternative storyline was a mistake.

Now, when these become available I can see buying a pair and putting prescription lenses in them. OTOH, it does show that Google does not really know what to do with a new product. Everything else it has done in the consumer space has been a refinement or copy. Search using graph theory, phones that were open and now less so, a languishing Office app. What it does with Glasses will determine the future. It could be really good, if they release as a tool instead of a toy.

A note about the video at http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23388359/san-jose-sheriffs-office-release-video-attack-pg (linked in TFA) for those of you using Firefox with NoScript on Windows: I had to allow mercurynews.com and brightcove.com.

Willms isn't the only one to survive and thrive after the government imposed a huge Internet ad-related fine. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt even managed to get named to the Mayo Clinic Board of Trustees in November, after his company agreed to forfeit $500 million for allowing online Canadian pharmacies to place advertisements through its AdWords program targeting consumers in the U.S., resulting in the unlawful importation of controlled and non-controlled prescription drugs. In December, the Mercury News reported on Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood's ongoing efforts to stop Google from making it too easy to buy drugs online without a prescription (screenshot). In his 2011 Senate testimony (PDF), Schmidt said "we absolutely regret what happened. It [drug advertising] was a mistake," and replied "Absolutely" when asked if Google had "taken steps to make sure that that sort of thing never happens again."

Only until the inifinigon is built.

You want a project done fast, offer incentive...

He does offer an incentive. Either work until you're dead tired or you're fired. And that partnered with the collusive hiring practices that go on in Silicon Valley (and you'd be naive to think only Apple, Google and Intel are the only ones doing this rather than just being the only ones caught doing it) you'll likely be facing a hard time getting another job.

Donuts and a radar gun? Have you ever been to Oakland? Fix this:

http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_22622926/an-oakland-murder-trial-against-teenager-that-sadly

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_23890186/oakland-12-people-shot-less-than-24-hours

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d6b_1364321154&comments=1

http://www.monitor.net/monitor/0708a/copyright/snitch.html

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Oakland-snitch-killing-brings-65-to-life-term-2414713.php

This is far beyond smoking pot and speeding. This is a culture that actively celebrates murder and beats or kills those that cooperate with the police. You can't fix this by hiring new cops that ignore people smoking pot and breaking the speeding limit. Until you fix the culture Oakland will continue to be a hell hole for the residents that live there.

I think there is room for us to disagree about the interpretation of what GP said. Based on the SJMN article, I think GP is saying it should rise by $7k per annum, over a period of time. I've added the link to the SJMN article for your information, and note that today Matt Drudge linked to it on his home page: http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-world/ci_24248486/obamacares-winners-and-losers-bay-area

I'm so sorry ms.moderator that I didn't site a source for my oracle slam; maybe your cramps? will subside? you'll have a better day tomorrow?

I won't go there. I live across the bay in SF, and I know better. What the above article doesn't mention is the fact that Oakland is #1 in the nation for robberies. #1. Now that is saying something,

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23191895/oakland-robbery-capital-america?source=pkg

Oaklanders endured one robbery for every 91 residents last year. That not only was the city's highest robbery rate in two decades, it was the highest of any major American city since 2000.

You have a complete idiot for a mayor, who doesn't know anything about how to manage and police a large city, and businesses are leaving in droves because of it. And your criminals BART over into the city and cause mayhem here out in my neighborhood, and then go back.

But you have a few nice bars downtown. And the Paramount and Fox theaters are nice.

What's the deal with Coutts?

But haven't dozens of people already done this over the years?

I reckon this demonstrates French waiters may have the same technical prowless as US private pilots
(and heaps more than a bunch of /.-ers how call themself geeks but all they can do is attempts of lame humor... vous defier dire ce n'est pas comme ca...
G'day, mate, good on you!)

Seumass, you made a comment a couple weeks ago about Art Bell and Coast to Coast. I'm the guy who replied to it.

I just saw this article, and thought I should pass it on to you.

http://www.mercurynews.com/entertainment/ci_23757348/art-bell-returning-radio-sirius-show-about-paranormal

-
For some reason, the right edge of the story is cut off with a few letters hidden. Select the text and copy-n-paste into Notepad if you need.

Both of the numbers we listed are correct: about half from membership dues, and 3.2% from corporate donations. The NRA also gets money from advertisements in its publications, payouts from its endowments, donations from members, donations from state-level gun-rights groups, etc. The point I'm trying to make is that there simply isn't a logical case to be made that gun companies control the NRA when they don't provide even close to half of its funding, while gun-owning members provide more than half.

Indeed, that would be inefficient when they can get members to do their dirty work for them.

You're literally saying that people acting in what they've each determined to be their own best interest, is in fact a giant behavioral control conspiracy. If the NRA's policies really were so out of line with the membership's desires, we wouldn't see the membership continue to increase. Your whole argument relies on the pretentious fallacy that people don't know what is best for themselves, but you do.

The judicious use of outright lies, such as the "they're coming to get your guns" narrative, also helps.

All but the last one of these is from THIS YEAR.

Hawaii legislature proposes gun confiscation
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/its-hawaiis-proposed-guns-laws-that-are-criminal/123

New York Assemblyman asks colleague not to mention that original proposed SAFE Act included confiscation
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2013/01/20/NY-Assemblyman-exposes-gun-confiscation-agenda-of-Democrats

Missouri Democrats introduce legislation to confiscate guns
http://nation.foxnews.com/gun-control/2013/02/14/missouri-democrats-introduce-legislation-confiscate-firearms-gives-gun-owners-90-days-turn-weapons

VA has veterans who cannot manage their own financial affairs declared prohibited persons unable to own firearms
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/04/15/va-targeting-veterans-for-gun-confiscation/

NJ State Senator "We needed a bill that was going to confiscate confiscate confiscate."
http://www.politickernj.com/back_room/confiscate-confiscate-confiscate#

Oregon Legislator calls fears of gun confiscation a "paranoid delusion" and then states he is in favor of gun confiscation
http://www.examiner.com/article/gun-grabber-has-meltdown-flees-public-affairs-forum-anger

Governor Cuomo says, "confiscation could be an option."
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/336373/cuomo-confiscation-could-be-option-eliana-johnson

Feinstein suggests "compulsory buyback."
http://washingtonexaminer.com/sen.-feinstein-suggests-national-buyback-of-guns/article/2516648

CA assembly proposes confiscating 166,000 legally registered guns.
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_22544460/californias-state-senate-democrats-roll-out-big-gun

And the classic from 1995:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoWE8v9QTOY

And you think Apple and Microsoft are any less evil?? How many wind and solar farms are they bankrolling? What kind of phone are YOU using, hypocrite?

I have two words for you -- bribery and extortion. It's how politics work in the US.

To be fair, neither of the companies you cited actually have (had?) the mandate "Do No Evil" plastered next to their names. It's pretty ballsy to come out with that statement and yet then crap like this, especially when they just shrug their shoulders and say "um, yea, dude gives us tax breaks" when you call them on it.

Can't say I disagree about the rest, though. Corporations hijacked American democracy decades ago, everything they do is just smoke and mirrors to hide their unabashed self-interest.

-------

"Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something." ... Man In Black