I'll give an example. Assuming your tax rate is a flat 20% and your income before taxes is $100,000, then your tax bill will be $20,000. If you donate $10,000 to a charity, the $10,000 is tax deductible and reduces your taxable income from $100,000 down to $90,000. At $90,000, your tax bill is $18,000. Therefore, your $10,000 tax deductible donation reduced your tax bill by $2,000.

The budget for the Department of Defense is being cut though. http://comptroller.defense.gov/defbudget/fy2013/FY2013_Budget_Request_Overview_Book.pdf FY 2013 Base Budget has a reduction of $5.2 billion compared to FY 2012. The budget for Overseas Contingency Operations (which includes Afghanistan and Iraq) has a separate budget request which shows a reduction of $26.6 billion compared to FY 2012.

You'll also need servers, a network infrastructure, and personnel to maintain the equipment. Plus, all that equipment needs to be replace or upgraded every so often. And that's only the general equipment. If the department goes into specialized fields within CS, they'll also need special equipment.

Oracle makes a lot of software with which they charge expensive license fees.

There's the costs of continuously upgrading to the latest high end computers as we can't have the students learning on outdated slow equipment. There's the costs of servers and network infrastructure as modern computer systems are all connected. There's the cost of software licenses for the software running on those computers and these can get expensive. There's the cost of a dedicated IT team to maintain all that equipment, assuming that it is seperate from the general campus IT. For some universities, there's the cost of specialized gear such as virtual reality systems, robotics systems, cameras for computer vision, fiber optics equipment such as lasers, etc. It's not just office space and electricity.

I'll reply to your ancedote with mine. I brought 10 100W CFLs about 8 years ago. Of that, 9 of them are still in use today in 2 locations, each being used between 4 - 6 hours per day. They turn on instantly but does take about a minute to reach their full brightness. My electric bill dropped from almost $40/month down to $28/month when I made the switch. I am tempted to try new bulbs but alas, do not like retiring working bulbs.

It's not complicated and #1 is the answer. A few years ago at my former workplace, a top performing President of our division was quickly "removed" from the company to the surprise of everyone. Internal rumors (not publically announced in print) from management indicate that it was an ethics violation of the type you described. Shortly afterwards, everyone had to take related ethics training. In the annual mandatory ethics classes of the following years, there was a new true story of a real life example (with names changed) that seems similar to the event.

That sounds like a good story for TAL...

The peeple making the emergency calls may not necessarily be on the bus, just within range of the jammer. For example, maybe the bus is stuck in traffic due to an accident and people outside are trying to make emergency cals.

My Zune is black, althought I was tempted by the silver version. Brown can do alot, I prefer it over FedEx.

I think of it as removing the ability to unlock the hood from inside the cabin. You'll still be able to enter the cabin and operate the car (use the device). You can even get a new radio (downloadable approved apps) but opening the hood to add a turbocharger is forbidden as it can significantly change the performance of the car.

For that analogy, it would be like forcing to driver to use only the dealer to change their oil. The dealers would love that. In reality, this reminds me of the "Right To Repair" law being proposed in Massachusetts.

Sounds like Boston and the rest of the state...

Payouts may go down + premiums stay level = more profit

I think there are still places in New York City where one can get live chicken and rabbits for slaughter. I know they're still around but I'm not sure where. Live fish, eels, frogs, and other sea creatures are pretty common in the city too. Meat from a freshly killed animal taste different from one that was previously frozen or sitting in a case or hours.