Wow, I was honestly hoping for better! Of everything you can pick from the Bush administration, that's the best you can come up with?

First of all, where's the "toxic" revolving door here? I understand that you disagree with the decision that the Bush FCC made regarding unbundling (though the article you linked to is completely incoherent), but that's not at all what this discussion is about.

Secondly, if unbundling was so disastrous, why has gigabit internet rapidly proliferated around the country over the last decade? If it was such a bad decision, decreed by a "toxic" individual, why has the Obama FCC shown zero interest in changing the rule? Here's a thought: "...by the time Barack Obama took office in 2009, [unbundling rules] had become so discredited that the FCC didn't try to revive them."

http://www.vox.com/2015/2/26/8117489/conservatives-winning-net-neutrality

Here, btw, is a Slate take on Michael Powell, who they call "an earnest technocrat, out of place in the politically calculating Bush administration. ... Powell is the closest thing to Al Gore in official Washington today. ... But Powell's not a fire-breathing conservative and shill for big business. Like Gore, he's a wonk with an abiding interest in policy minutiae and a deep faith in technology."

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2003/02/the_real_michael_powell.html

Toxic revolving door? Hilarious.

I know you're under no onus to fulfill my request, but I did say specifically, not incredibly broad and general strokes!

Are you talking about Clinton's repeal of Glass-Steagal?

And debt has risen even faster and higher under President Obama. So is he even worse than President Bush? Would have been nice if the 90s dotcom boom and the post-Soviet boom had continued forever.

What Clinton regulations were rolled back?

Honestly, destabilizing the Middle East seems to have succeeded wonderfully and I don't see how American interests are hurt at all. All of our alleged enemies have their hands full now. The loss of American lives is very unfortunate.

This is, more or less, Bernard Lewis's thesis. Check out the book "What Went Wrong" by Lewis. Interesting read.

Famous scholar of Islam and the Middle East Marshall Hodgson coined the term "Islamdom" for "Islam-land" (and to echo "Christendom"). Islamdom thus is Morocco to Western China, Central Asia to Central Africa (roughly). Good term. You can refer to Islamdom without referring to Arabs, Persians, South Asians, etc.

What damage, specifically?

Could you give some examples of the truly toxic?

I completely agree with your point. One interesting point of speculation is that it's highly possible that Brother Adam (the developer of the Buckfast bee) was responsible for bringing Varroa to Europe. Brother Adam imported bees from around the world, and the first appearance of Varroa in the UK was not very far from where he operated.

What about Timewarner?

North Carolina generally has cheap electricity. If you have a heatpump, your electricity bill should not be that bad! Heatpumps generally work well in our climate.

I've run the numbers for the Triangle area after getting quotes through several local companies. Including both the federal and state tax credits and depreciation (this was for a commercial installation), break even is generally 7-8 years off. Probably worthwhile, but not a clear case. Add in a number 10 grand plus for batteries and the case is even more borderline. If you've got the cash, I agree it's great--would love to have power after a hurricane!

Isn't the price of electricity in NC literally 50% of what it is in California? We have cheap electricity.

For one thing, you're forgetting that relatively few people (in the US and many other places) pay full price upfront for phones. They buy an iPhone for $99 / $199 / $299 / $399 / etc and then have a subsidized contract over two years. Sure, you could buy it outright, but with most of the US carriers you're not going to get a reduced monthly, so what's the point?

It probably depends a lot on the specific area you live in. Cox was fine (no major complaints other than a billing dispute when I moved), but I do like that TWC doesn't even have a soft cap on usage.

I know you're making a joke, but I just thought I should add--I've lived in Comcast, Cox, and Timewarner cable areas. I'm commenting solely on Internet service, but Timewarner has far and away been the best. They're rolling out their ridiculously named "Maxx" service in my area in the next month or two. 25/5 will be upgraded 100/10 or 200/20 (I'm not entirely clear which it is). It's no Google fiber, but it will do until Google rolls out next year... I'm overjoyed the merger is not going through.

There are so many non-native English speakers that I think, in this particular case, it would be difficult to spread them evenly throughout the school district. Any calls to create a ELL (English as a Learned Language) "magnet" school are immediately met with cries of racism and "separate but (not) equal" -- attacks that resonate very deeply in America today.

Again, anything like this is immediately met with cries of segregation, racism, and classism. If you group kids by academic achievement, what happens is that many of the white and Asian students get grouped together, and black and hispanics get grouped together on the low achieving end. It's "ok" if people move to self-segregate, but public schools doing this deliberately would be shot down immediately.

I don't know if there is a solution.

Not according to any statistics I have ever seen. Do you have any other data? I would like to see.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4399748.stm
http://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/race-society/france-muslims-terrorism-and-challenges-of-integration-research-roundup
etc.

Everything is an artificial construct. Society is, of course, an artificial construct. Why don't I just come and live in your house? Why don't I just come and work in your office? Obviously that's an absurd example, but it shows that society is full of artificial constraints. Countries control their citizens (to varying degrees), for the most part with the stated goal of making life better for their citizens. Unless you are a far extreme libertarian, most people don't actually believe anything remotely like what you've stated.

No, I don't blame them at all.

Europe is running into this problem to an even greater degree (due to slower population growth and more generation welfare states) than the United States. Welfare states cannot support unlimited numbers of newcomers who do not pay in as much as they take out.

We have to balance that. I am in favor of allowing greater immigration, but eliminating (through enforcement, penalties against business, etc) illegal immigration.

I had a conversation a few months ago on slashdot on this topic.

If you are living in Germany, would you mind sharing your annual kilowatt usage, natural gas usage, and home size? I would be interested in a comparison.

Here's me:

I have a standalone house, that has two levels and a basement, with two HVAC systems: 2500 ft^2 (~230 m^2) and two hot water heaters. Heating is done through the potable hot water heaters.

Annual electric usage: 2014-02-01 through 2015-01-31: 10,067 kWh.
Annual gas usage: 2014-01-01 through 2014-12-31: 735 CCF (centum cubic feet). I'm not sure what you measure natural gas usage in--m^3? If so, approx 20.8 m^3.

You're right about what happens, of course, but vastly over simplifying.

I live in Raleigh, NC. My wife and I have two kids, one of whom will be starting kindergarten next year.

The public school we were zoned for is ~75% African American and Hispanic. I'm ok with this, I grew up in the area and went to a "majority minority" school (though there were not many Hispanics in the area back then) as well. This school also has over 50% of the students who score lowly on the English proficiency charts. 60% of the students are on free lunch. The end of grade test scores are...abysmal. When visiting the school, the teachers were just overwhelmed with having to deal with so many non-English and other remedial students.

I want my kids to be happy at school and get something positive out of it. I just could not see sending my kids to that school. This was a very hard decision, but we moved from our 150k house to a 250k house 8 miles north. The new school is still very diverse--about 35% African American and Hispanic, but has much better test scores, an actual PTA with engaged parents, etc.

It's easy to criticize those 1%%er fat cats and their slutty wives, but really, everybody wants the best for their kid. You can't blame parents for doing whatever they can--moving, paying an arm and a leg for private school, etc--to help their children out. It's really just human nature.