So how do explain people coming in and building giant expensive buildings in the city? The number of condos going up in my hood is insane. I guess they didn't the memo about rent control stopping them from making a decent profit. Only like 2% percent of the apartments are rent controlled.

Have you even looked for a decent apartment in the city? Because usually people that say " only way you can get a decent apartment is practically if someone dies." mostly know the city from watching Seinfeld episodes.

I live in what used to be a "high crime area". The east village new york... You wouldn't have any idea of that today because of the massive investment and insane urban growth that has occurred in the last 20 or so years. My point is that urban areas in the US are filled with space that could be acquired cheaply and could work with the community to become "gentrified".

Mostly what suburban dwellers call "high crime" I see as areas where there are some minorities and some people that work blue collar jobs (god forbid right, sheesh). It most is this reflexive overestimation of the danger that other people that don't look exactly lime them that the suburbs foster. America is full of this jaded thinking, I grew up with it too.

Its not even a "private alternative". I can't pay someone to take these Google buses if I am not one of the sanctioned few who work in the pearly gates of Apple, Google, Yahoo, etc... Its not even close to the services to the MTA provides, if you actually took the MTA you would understand that.

I take it everyday and so does everyone else here. This is the great thing about NYC that people out in the burbs don't get. Except for the gilded few that get whisked around in limos and choppers in NYC public transit is the one thing most New Yorkers have in common and it makes for better citizens here. You can just see it in the amount of charitable giving, the lower crime, and the gregariousness of people that live here.

I have lived in 5 different states and 8 different cities. I grew up in North Dallas, the home of the suburb. I can say with experience that this guy has a point because I have lived on both sides of the fence of this argument.

Yes basically Texas industry is very good at painting politicians as against "free market" ideals if they try pass regulations that either hurt themselves or help others (including the actual citizens).

Take for instance the case in West Texas where bail bondsmen lobby to keep the amount of bail bonds high for petty crimes. While many sherifs want to lower the amount of said bail, all the bails bondsmen have to do is say that sherifs are "soft on crime". Many people are caught stuck in jail for really stupid stuff to satisfy the business needs of bail bondsmen.

This is huge in Texas. Just notice the dry laws in North Texas. There are areas in the North Texas that have a huge number of liquor stores that make insane profits. These areas are owned by those with great political power so that they can make the revenue off the booze sales from nearby areas where cannot by booze.

When people say in Texas say "free market", they usually mean that there is regulation that benefits their access to markets while limiting the access of others. So its essentially "free for me". A good example of this was when my friend and me tried to setup an ISP in central texas, much to our chagrin, we realized that only certain corporation$ or people are free to do that.

I know this happens in a ton of other places (say for instance in New York, where I live now). It is just funny that in Texas there is such a conflict between what politicians say about "free markets" and how the markets actually stack up.

On a serious note, these are only "times of austerity" for some programs. Since 9/11 went down, contractors who make hardware for spying and provide services to provide logistics/security to US personnel abroad pretty much get a blank check from the Federal government. Pretty much no elected official wants to be seem as "soft on terrorism".

The very few that question the trillions we have spent on the war on terror are called conspiracy theorists or are labeled as nut cases.

I read that as "can of sperm". I was surprised someone else canned their sperm, I thought I was the only one that did that.

Yes but the problem with going house by house and cable by cable looking for anyone flying under the radar is that you start trying to detect an extremely low level signal out of a ton of noise. You can't cheat statistics though and the false alarm rates of your detection algorithms become increasingly significant. So you start picking more and hopefully "better" data looking to detect a higher level signal in less noise.

Civil liberties and freedom go right out the window as you try to declare war on an idea. So now you go after people expressing an idea.

Or you just become insanely power hungry and corrupt from the incredible power that you have been entrusted with.

Either way, you broke they system you were trying to "protect"

Honey if you call and I'm not home I'll be at the gym or the nuclear weapons facility.

I would add
5. Establish an election holiday so people can actually take their time and (hopefully) make a better decision about who to vote for.
6. Limit time between campaigning to a month or two at most

This shutdown has been a long time coming lets face it. Congress has been mostly broken for years. It seems someone is always ready to throw a wrench into the gears no matter what the issue is (Except war and surveillance, because hey no one wants to be that guy that gets blamed for a terrorist attack). Its good that things have come to a head because the whole world needs to see that the US government is broken.

Typical Slashdot bullshit. If I told you to start your own Apple or Microsoft you'd piss and moan about monopolies, regulations, ip laws, predatory business practices that would get in your way. But you have no qualms about telling someone unhappy with Amazon, B&N, etc... you would say "start your own book shop", "start your own health care company", "start your own hospital", or "start your own fucking space program" etc.... without even a CLUE that the predatory business practices and monopoly powers of the big boys of other industries are the same or worse than for technology companies.

The message here is very clear. You either go along with what the executive branch wants you to do, which is plainly goes against the 4th and 1st amendments or you are a traitor. The stunning lack of previous resistance by corporations that provide internet, phone, and telegraph service to NSA's agenda have created the expectation that corporate "people" are willing to cough up data that lets the US spy on its citizens on a massive scale without any kind of objection.

Yes I would hope he would end up in a mostly democratic country as well. It would be great to see people in Iceland rise up against international espionage of the color that the NSA is engaged in.

But after the US almost got the Turkish government to amend there constitution to use Turkish bases in the Iraq war, I realized how the US has become an agent against democracy. They used all kinds of economic and military incentives that almost brought Turkey to amend its constitution against the sentiment of the vast majority of voters in that country. I would expect the current US government would play the same knuckle twisting to get a lowly "traitor" extradited from any western ally and hence the US would play a role in spoiling another democracy.

According to Interfax.

God speed. Enjoy the hot Venezuelan women. There is no justice for you in the US...not anymore.