Let me be the first to say: Huh? Seriously, make the distinction here. They're both bad. One you can fight, because you know it's coming. The other one is like the frog in the frying pan. The bad you can see coming, you can fight... which makes it less bad.

I'm having a hard time understanding how it's a bad thing. The proposal should get voter approval in the municipality to be serviced. It shouldn't be run as a government agency, but more of a service to customers. The stipulation of the program not being able to offer services below cost doesn't even seem to be a bad idea. Where is the story here?

I thought they came from Fox News?

Who cares about which one is purely liberal or purely conservative? Where are the socially liberal, fiscally conservative representatives for the majority of us out there? I know the pedantic crowd might pick it apart, but it's possible to compromise between fiscally conservative and socially liberal.

I'm tired of Uncle Sam telling citizens what they can do to themselves... That includes abortion and drug use. I support military action in countries where innocents are being slaughtered. I do not condone killing people for oil. I think my tax dollars should be used for research and anything that will give our country a competitive advantage. I think my tax dollars should be used to provide emergency assistance to families in need with checks and balances in place and enforced to ensure they're still trying to be a benefit to society

If only....

I thought taxes bought civilization and profits bought lobbyists. Is my math wrong? Why would the government need to spend tax dollars to get the government to do it's bidding?

Forever might have been a strong term, but he's not far from the mark in recent times. I guess invalidating a whole argument based on a small inconsistency is rational though. One thing to think about: If the Republicans don't represent the racists, bigots, and xenophobes of the country; another group will.

Daaaaaaang... You sound so smart! It seems like the kid beat you to it though.

FTA:

"Otherwise, the carbon would have to be coming out of the stars and hence the Earth, made mostly of carbon, we wouldn't be here. So I calculated, the time it would take to create 2 percent of the carbon in the universe, it would actually have to be several micro-seconds. Or a couple of nano-seconds, or something like that. An extremely small period of time. Like faster than a snap. That isn't gonna happen."

So he's 12. And he does math. And he thought of that. From what I can tell, the numbers he's crunched stated that there should have been some carbon but there was none. Nice work on the quick reaction though.

Gee whiz, mister.... It looks like you just got trolled!

Forcing people to pay to not be ripped off is a protection racket and should be considered a crime like any other kind of theft.

How does that even equate? If that's the way you see it, you're in the wrong society. You don't HAVE to pay anything. You can sit on your work and hope nobody has the same idea as you. I'm sure there are a lot of people doing just that. The only change is that if someone does the paperwork that the original inventor decided to NOT do, then the person with the effort that is in line with the established process wins. It's not hard. It's not complicated. Sure, there are a lot of hypotheticals that could be considered here but I'm not going to indulge those.

Also, you wouldn't be giving a murderous criminal organization any of your hard earned money unless you were living in the states. If that's the case, then you're in the wrong country and that's your fault.

You'll have to excuse how terse that was. Inane vitriolic hypotheticals kinda bug me.

The fact that you called it inferior without any type of reasoning is not a valid argument at all.

So correct me if I'm wrong but those people aren't beholden to us because they're not elected? I thought if they took public money, they are responsible to the public. Am I missing something? Or do you have another understanding of this?

Just like Marx didn't take into account the greedy corrupting the system, it seemd you're no taking into account that capitalism suffers from bullying. They have the money so they can make the rules. In capitalism, the power is (supposed to be) in the people. It's looking like the natural end of functional capitalism doesn't meet the theoretical end.

Because having the task of muting your TV thrust on you against your will is a decent alternative. Yes, turning the TV off also helps, but it doesn't fix the problem of the system being gamed to annoy people into paying attention to something they normally wouldn't. Maybe it's an insignificant ordeal getting addressed, but it still needed addressed. In this instance, the free market doesn't really apply to third parties. When it comes to the decision of which adverts and how loud they are, your opinion doesn't matter. Only your demographic.

If they can't deliver the speeds, how hard is it to have a truthful advertising campaign? Seriously, making up a problem in another area to cover up their failings seems to be issue here. Nobody wants to go on record saying they fucked up. Unless the person is a person of integrity. Unfortunately, the corporate persona doesn't value integrity. Just money.

You're talking to the guy that has market-ticker.org as a reference for everything he cites. I'm not going to go bashing a site though. Go give it a peek. There are lot of suspect statements to go around. Something tells me he's been getting his info from limited, biased sources.