That is an oversimplification, to say the least. Even if you have a collection of districts who paid for the development of a textbook, it still has a non-zero distribution cost once it is complete. It still needs to be printed and delivered. If you want to go without actually printing it, you have to pay for the bandwidth to host it so that people can read the electronic copy (and then come up with a solution for kids who aren't connected to the internet at home or are disabled in a way that makes computer use impractical). Parents will complain about errors and ommissions in the book which will end up dictating rewrites.

This is not a small thing you are asking for, here. Your proposal then requires the school boards to fund such productions for every topic of every grade - in some cases multiple levels of one subject for each grade.

Primarily because the school boards aren't in the business of writing textbooks or funding the creation of the same.

It seems that in the US at least, the minivan is quite nearly dead. How many companies other than Chrysler are still making them for the US market at all? Not many.

As for the "pull down mirror", that isn't even remotely new technology. Other vehicles have had those for a decade or more. But of course because America - and the American media especially - love Toyota with a great passion, we regard it as a technological marvel.

Really? We only successfully got people to the moon 6 times. If you urinate 6 times in a day, do you refuse to do it again later in the day because you are bored of urination?

Novelty? Really? No. Going to Disney World is novel (though plenty of people do it far more than 6 times in their lifetime). Going to the moon is not merely "novel". Going to the moon is a pinnacle of engineering and science.

As for purpose, anyone claiming there to "not be much purpose" to going to the moon is epically shortsighted. For one, we will eventually exhaust all the resources on this planet, and our species will become extinct if we cannot - at the very least - successfully extract resources from other worlds. We really need to find a way to actually live on other worlds if we are to continue to exist. Furthermore the moon can tell us a great deal about the origins of our planet and solar system.

... we returned from the last manned mission to the moon. For a while it seemed like it was going to be a routine event, then we just gave up on it. We haven't put a man on the moon in over 40 years now.

I was going to say much the same. Indeed most people alive in our country today are not old enough to remember a moon landing at all. While space exploration is not dead, it has been 40+ years since we last sent a man someplace where no man has been before.

Well, I did say:

Or did you want more specific examples of how Ron Paul's cult oppresses the common man?

That said, there really isn't a candidate of any significance in this country who truly represents opportunity for the economically oppressed.

I became - not entirely by my own choice - a comcast customer last summer (I previously lived in a place with a different cable company who had vastly superior service in every aspect). Every time I have called for support I have had to deal with operators who were running on obvious scripts. I expect the 8 minute hard sell to try to prevent the customer from leaving was only another script.

I thought this was going to relate to nuts with high amounts of radioactivity.

You don't take facts well. Perhaps that is why you are so eager to endorse the intents of the cult of Ron Paul without considering the consequences of the same.

I am fully aware of the difference. Are you aware of the fact that your response is a complete non-sequitur? I'm sorry that I hurt your feelings so deeply that you couldn't bring yourself to actually respond to my post and instead tried to insult my intellect.

If you'd like to actually discuss politics, feel free to try again.

Are you a subscriber of the delusional belief that we don't already have the most regressive system of taxation in the industrialized world? Your statement certainly seems to suggest that you are.

Which leads back to the fact that Paul's ambitions only concentrate more power into the hands of the powerful. In this country, money is power. When the people who hold the most money get more of it, they only become more powerful. Even more so, they are further given more ability to prevent others from accumulating either.

You're dead wrong on that one. In this country power belongs to those who have money. The rest are left pretending that they can fight for scraps.

The first part is certainly a claim straight from Paul's platform. The second is conjecture, and the third is fantasy.

Even if you shut down the fed this afternoon you would still have powerful banks and powerful corporations. You would still have a deeply regressive system of taxation and a power structure based on suppression of the lower economic classes. None of that would change, and corporate welfare wouldn't go away either.

In what way? The platforms that I see Ron Paul preach about the most often all share the common connection of reducing the tax burden of the top earners, while simultaneously removing protections and opportunities of the rest. I certainly don't see how any of his platforms do anything towards actually reducing the power that big business - and big banking in particular - has over government. Ending the dollar for a gold standard (or otherwise recoupling the two) is only smoke and mirrors.

I will give you that there are a lot of different people who call themselves "libertarians", and there is an argument to be made that there really is no libertarian party in this country - or at least, none that can possibly encompass the values of all the people who call themselves libertarians.

However, the most vocal "libertarian" politician - and the one with the most vocal and dedicated followers - is Ron Paul. His platform, beyond any shadow of a doubt, embraces the values that I outlined above. If you want to claim that he is not a true libertarian, you can make that argument.

The cartoon appears to be stating that the stranglehold that big banks have over the federal government is the problem. I will agree that it is, indeed, part of the problem.

However I don't see any political movement that has gathered any amount of attention as having a serious plan to break that dependency. The libertarian party wants to give more power to the people with the most money, which just reinforces this problem. I have not seen any indication of the Tea Party giving a shit about it. The green party only cares about it as much as it interferes with their ability to buy pot.