It was less than $1.00 under Clinton

This is perfect. All FTTH/FTTB should be tax supported "infrastructure" instead of run by thieving corporate scumbags. All fibers should terminate in a neighborhood or regional carrier-neutral "meet me" room where anyone with backbone (pun intended) could offer connectivity to any customer just by running a jumper or configuring a switch remotely. Then the customer is free to choose the flavor of thieving corporate scumbag he wants to deal with. Sign me up for a mix of Level 3 and Cogent please!

I've never used Outlook or Exchange. I started with whatever shell application Delphi used (Pine, I think) back in the early '90s, but when Win95 came out I switched first to Pegasus, then to Forte Agent (pop3 mail and newsreader) and got a Netcom dialup account. Eventually I started running my own Linux servers and MTAs on the back end. Dialup gave way to DSL and then to FIOS, ClearWire, and 4G hotspot, depending on where I am that day. I'm still using Agent configured for pop3 on my laptop, although I haven't upgraded it in several years and haven't had access to Usenet in about as long. It's always done threading and has pretty decent filtering so only get a handful of items in my inbox. Everything else is automatically filed in my 350+ folders.

Corn has billions of dollars of subsidies available, whereas the "different crop" probably does not.

Here's a giant clue for anyone looking for a new location: anything called "... Mountain" is the result of massive (and ongoing) tectonic forces that dwarf all the nuclear energy man has ever generated. They need to look for a place called "... Plain" or " ... Salt Flats". They also might want to consider NOT putting it next to one of the larger rivers in the country.

... or that you own the company and can do whatever you want any time you want.

Visa and the issuing banks are NEVER "on the hook". All fraudulent charges are passed back to the merchant.

Incorrect. Banks NEVER lose money on fraudulent transactions. EVER. All fraud is passed back to the merchant who accepted the card.

They're expensive because the cartel that makes them got them classified as medical devices decades ago. There are all kinds of legal and regulatory hoops you have to jump thru before you can call something a "hearing aid".

You can buy a bluetooth earpiece for $20-$80 that has the exact same parts - condenser mic, speaker element, battery, and opamp/EQ circuit - and has vastly more functionality, including the bluetooth radio system and spiffy LED indicator lights.

Hearing aids are configured with an equalization curve tailored the the wearer's specific hearing loss, but it's not like there are a million different kinds of loss. It's mostly "top down" according to age and environment. Only newborns can hear 20khz. We lose a few thousand before we hit puberty and pretty much everyone loses everything above 12k by their 30's. (by "lose" I mean response is down a considerable number of decibels from our factory abilities). Impact-type noise from construction, artillery, or rock bands can punch holes in what's left, especially in the voice frequencies, but it's not like it's DNA-complicated or something. A simple hearing test can identify your remaining response curve in a few minutes and it isn't going to be that much different from the guy on the next bulldozer on the left or the guitar player on the other side of the stage.

There's no reason an ear doctor or audiologist couldn't give you a "prescription" response curve when you go in for a hearing test that you could load into a device that costs two figures (three if you want it to be super tiny) yourself with an app of some kind. The 4-5-figure price tags are simple price gouging by a "medical" cartel.

As a former telephone contractor all over the continental US, I can say with certainty that the majority of aerial telephone cable is strung on power company poles on power company easements. Phone companies only put up pole leads when there is no other utility run present or when it's more cost-effective to roll their own rather than send lease payments to another utility. I don't know what it is these days, but a couple decades ago in many parts of the country, the standard lease was $1 per attachment. At that price it's rarely cheaper to set their own poles.

Direct-buried cable is mostly plowed along public roadways or railroad easements and then across customer land to the point of service. New underground (conduit runs) is generally part of a joint engineered project with other utilities and the local road department. Runs are usually under public roads with entrance ducts under customer property to provide service. A lot of old underground runs have been in place since the early part of the 20th century. In metropolitan areas, some were originally built by Western Union for their telegraph service. Western Union's aerial easements date back to the late 19th century.

You forgot the most important aspect - no port blocking. On a business line you can run your own mail server, DNS, web server, VPNs, etc. I don't think there's a consumer connection left in this country that allows outgoing port 25 connections by default. Most block 80, 443, 21, 22, etc too. On a business connection, you are expected to be running a business, with all the various services that entails.

On a few types of business connections (T-1 and some fiber, for example) you can negotiate a service level guarantee like four nines or better (99.99% uptime). On consumer connections, you're not guaranteed ANY service. If it's working at all, at any speed, count your blessings.

Unless you live in a flat, treeless desert, a chain saw is another must-have post-storm survival tool

You clearly don't work in marketing. Anything is possible with the right ad agency.