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And no, boards does not have a profit responsibility to shareholders. I don't know where this myth comes from

It comes from US case law Dodge vs. Ford and whilst there has been some calls to stop teaching it, it was cited in 1983 in Dirks v. SEC and as recently in a whole set of cases in 2016, so it is very real.

What you are arguing is referred to as "Improper Altruism", which are the findings of the court that reflect what you are advocating.

It's not surprising, colleges have been weakening their standards for graduates for a generation. For example, you can get an English degree without ever reading Shakespeare. You can't even find a rhetoric class at many universities these days, and if you want public speaking experience you're better off at toastmasters (but that was once a common requirement). Foreign language and math requirements are dropping as well. In computer science, you can graduate with a degree without ever understanding how a computer works. In some cases, I've seen CS graduates who didn't feel comfortable programming. These are problems.

Then there is grade inflation. Which is fine if it corresponded to an increase in the skill level of graduates, but it doesn't. Because of the way student evaluations work, a professor who pushes students to work harder will end up with bad ratings. Too much homework? Bad rating. Hard tests? Bad rating. Whereas the clown teacher is entertaining, and gets a raise. Over time, there is evolutionary pressure downwards.

Then of course, students want to have fun in college. If I were designing a college, it would be like a monastery. Not many people would enjoy that, I admit. However, it encourages the universities to build new facilities, rock climbing gyms and saunas and such. Which aren't necessarily bad, but you can see these universities are not competing on the quality of their academics.

If a "basic income" program is implemented in .us, I rather suspect it will resemble the "welfare islands" concept of Jerry Pournelle or the "Terrafoam" concept of Marshall Brain. . . Massive barracks and industrial-style population management of the residents.

It would be survivable, but not pleasant. . .

This is what I found on the subject. (I'm not saying, btw, that it proves you're wrong... or right. I just present it as an information source.)

Stockholder lawsuits are about as effective as shooting ping pong balls at CEOs' armored limos.

http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2011/01/do-securities-lawsuits-help-shareholders.html

http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2012/05/case-law-on-the-fiduciary-duty-of-directors-to-maximize-the-wealth-of-corporate-shareholders.html for example, it isn't a theory.

Also, a charity is not a for-profit structure, it's not the same as a for-profit corporation. You seem a little confused, I hope it works out for you.

Not blogging, but: how about bribing senators in actual legislation (e.g., healthcare bill)?

Referring to blogging itself, this is probably going to be a "biased" blog, I'm sure, but, hotair has a piece on it. He doesn't mention "payola blogging" and Democrats specifically... but how about, ohhh... ACORN?

And to cap it off, this "news" lists a few "supposed examples" according to this guy, which does not even show any sort of rampant "GOP pays friendly bloggers!!!!!!!!11!!11" thing. Gasp, there are corrupt people who are Republicans? Shocking. And here I thought the Republican party were all saints.

Here is the mailto: for Sandi Gibbons, The L.A. County D.A.'s spokesperson with the obnoxious opinion in this piece.

She can probably be deluged with your complaints, and general opinion on her political future, and that of sitting D.A., Steve Cooley. He's tried to frame himself as holder of a non-partisan office, but this makes his acknowledged party affiliation pretty obvious. He previously insulted jurors and responsible in the failure to prosecute the attackers of Donovan Jackson.

A more civil feedback form is available at http://da.co.la.ca.us/feedback.htm. I think Ms. Gibbon's own e-mail might garner more attention.

Here's one example. I won't deny he has done some good in his career, but the story I link to shows a blatant abuse of power. But I forgot, Spitzer is a good guy according to Slashdot groupthink. This means the grandparent post and probably this one will be modded Troll.

Another person provided a link with nice commentary. It has a lot to do with judicial philosophy.

This is still a very usual split, but overall, the political nature of the court is exaggerated. When I last saw stats (several years ago), any pairwise comparison of the justices found them in agreement at least 60% of the time.

That said, this particular 5-4 split has not happened in the past ten years

However, within 5-4 decisions, Stevens and Thomas agree about 16 percent of the time.

Scalia was clearly the swing-vote on this case

"Although Scalia is no fan of the dormant commerce clause, he has written that: ... I will, on stare decisis grounds, enforce a self executing "negative" Commerce Clause in two situations: (1) against a state law that facially discriminates against interstate commerce, and (2) against a state law that is indistinguishable from a type of law previously held unconstitutional by this Court.

Since the state laws in question here demonstrably fell into the former category, and we can infer that Scalia was not persuaded by Thomas' account of the 21st amendment, stare decisis required him to vote to strike down these laws." (http://www.professorbainbridge.com/2005/05/suprem e_court_s.html)

Actually the result of this ruling is that states must ban all--regardless of origin--direct to consumer sales if they block them at all.

The supreme court merely ruled that states could not treat intra-state state sales differently from out of state sales.

The ruling preserves state control over this issue as long as the policy doesn't discriminate against out of state sellers.

see: http://www.professorbainbridge.com/2005/05/supreme _court_s.html

And these "reports" of campaign HQ shootings: let's see some citations

Here's blog post that cites eight seperate attacks

OK, everyone seems a little confused about this - like, why now when the book was published in 2000?

For those that don't RTFA:

- In 2000, this book came out, and Katie Jones asked Dutton (subsidiary of Penguin) to change the title, as she had the domain name and they were hijacking it; as a result of the book title, KJ was receiving emails both detailing peoples abuse at the hands of paedophiles, as well as abusive emails from paedophiles themselves. See here and here. KJ took loads of stuff (including pictures of herself and family) off the site as a result - and Penguin ignored the request. I can't find the original slashdot article, although I'm sure there must have been one.
- Now, four years later, Jones gets a nasty letter, and this slashdot story is posted. This is caused by KT doing some thing about teaching kids about online safety (whether for money or altruism I don't know) - and them calling it Katie.com. Source.
- It seems the lawyer, one Parry Aftab, has a website.

There's a good summary (almost as good as this one) here, and suprisingly, on CNN.

Not to be confused with the planned social engineering of the Senate Intelligence Committee. That was a plan to probe for weaknesses, and announce an investigation whether weaknesses are found or not. There effectively was a DOS when the attack was discovered and the interfaces were turned off to block the attack.