so we maintain a public fund - state budget - which pays for them, and which everyone is forced to pay to according to their ability, which we call taxes

...which almost everyone is forced to pay according to their inability to avoid* them...

*In the form of paying for lawyers, accountants and legislators to facilitate avoiding them.


The rest of your post is right on the money. I stay awake a lot of nights wondering what the other side of that phase transition from capitalism will look like. Obviously, corporate feudalism replacing nationalism seems the most likely near term.

My modem wasn't hairy to begin with.

From TFA: $2234 - with Windows 8.1, so... FAIL.

You're gonna LOVE Obamatrade:

"If you like your job, you can keep it".

From page 10 of the referenced https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33743.pdf:

Expedited Legislative Procedures

Should the above requirements be fulfilled to the satisfaction of Congress, it has agreed to follow certain expedited legislative procedures as defined in Sections 151-154 of the Trade Act of 1974, as amended. In effect, these rules require that Congress must act on the bill sent over by the White House, and in other ways represent a significant departure from ordinary legislative procedures. The major rules are listed below (see Appendix C for greater detail):

(1) mandatory introduction of the implementing bill in both houses of Congress and immediate referral to the appropriate committees (House Ways and Means, Senate Finance, and others);

(2) automatic discharge from House and Senate Committees after a limited period of time;

(3) limited floor debate; and

(4) no amendment, meaning that each house must vote either up or down on the bill, which passes with a simple majority.

For me, it's always been 9.8 m/s^2 underneath various laptops and phones I've owned.

The one (microscopically tiny) thing APK isn't batshit crazy about:

127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.static.ak.fbcdn.net static.ak.fbcdn.net
127.0.0.1 www.login.facebook.com login.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.fbcdn.net fbcdn.net
127.0.0.1 www.fbcdn.com fbcdn.com
127.0.0.1 www.static.ak.connect.facebook.com static.ak.connect.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.static.ak.facebook.com static.ak.facebook.com

Funny how they're against Big Gubment - unless it's supplying pork to their districts.

If companies act like evil fucks, customers will go elsewhere.</sarcasm>

Remember back in the 70's & 80's when HP was one of the top 10 companies in the world (including the then invincible Japanese) to work for?

Carly would probably lay off Congress and ship all their jobs to India, spend 13 trazillion dollars to buy Somalia, end all federal highway and other infrastructure funds; and drive the dollar down to 1$ == 12 slices of bread.

OK, you win the interwebs for today...

Well, I still have an "Ameritech.net" email address, and certainly they're not a monopoly...

So you're suggesting that a bill co-sponsored by 16 House Republicans (including 6 from Texas, home of JSC) rah-rahing manned space exploration and defunding Earth observations might somehow have ulterior motives?

I presume you know that "mandatory" doesn't mean anything* when bankers of any ilk are involved?

*Actually, it means "tell me the rules, so I can get around them".