Those are a great read - thanks for this.

> Comcast's peering connection to Level 3 has been saturated (over 90% capacity) 24/7 for over a year now

Got a source on that? Not that I doubt you, just looking to back up that claim.

More reading:

http://www.npr.org/2012/06/26/...

The gold plated faucets comment was merely hyperbole for effect - intending to signify they were spending way more than they needed to. Really, they were just spending too much money on new buildings, perks for top administrators and football coaches, and other 'status' projects.

See, what happened to those days was that gradually, colleges realized they could keep raising prices past what the government could pay, because they knew families of students could pay more. Colleges built palaces to "education", dormitories with gold plated faucets, gymnasiums, new buildings that were completely unnecessary simply because they could. All the while, tuition kept going up - the government saw that tuition was increasing at universities, so they'd raise the amount of subsidy, then the college would raise tuition above that to the point where families were bled just as much as before. Eventually, the bottom dropped out, the government said enough is enough, and held or dropped subsidies. Colleges, so used to 10% pay raises for tenured professors and unwilling to live with 20 year old dorms, screamed - "they're cutting our funding!" - so they just saddle their students with the maximum loan allowance they can - because they know they can get it - just to keep the gravy train coming. The more the government allows students to borrow, the more money colleges will charge.

It's economics at work. It's called Rent Seeking Behavior. If there is money to be gotten, it will be.

Here's a journal paper someone wrote on it.

Here's a bunch of resources on this from a think tank.

> minimal burdens on the vast majority of law-abiding firearm owners

In your eyes perhaps, but not in the eyes of the gun holding public.

Are those the same countries that come crying to the US whenever Vladimir Putin decides to turn the gas off? Maybe if they'd spend some money defending their own countries rather than depending on the US to do it, the US could afford to pay for college tuition for its citizens as well.

Easier said than done.

I rarely agree with Krugman, but he's right in this case - in order to effect change here, we need an economic solution - we need to make it so that it's in their best interest to reduce emissions. Voluntary boycotts of Chinese goods would be ineffective at best. We'd have to make goods from non-polluting sources have price parity with goods from polluting countries.

Umm, you do realize that the constitution specifically provides for the government to levy tariffs in Article 1 Section 8, right? Tariffs were the main source of revenue for the federal government until the income tax was established.

> right books

Yeah - humanities education is worthless.