The term is "just the tip" - and is an example of the biggest lie ever told. Close runner-up is "Only the very rich".

The trend is just the opposite in the EU, though. I've been dealing with a lot of folks from France lately, and they almost universally refer to themselves as "European", or "from Europe".

Sort of. It's generally referred to as "job security". Most government agencies have both good and worthless employees. The thing is, in government, the worthless employees are almost impossible to get rid of. So those agencies can never be as efficient as a company that can hire people at-will, and can cut staff that is not contributing. Yes, it's possible to fire government employees, but it's very difficult, and it requires putting resources into all the paperwork required to make it happen and avoid lawsuits. And there are all kinds of things that go on in government that perpetuates that, such as tribute, PC issues, long-term employees with strategic relationships, etc. And so the response when more resources are needed is never to look for the lowest-level contributors, but to simply hire more people to make up for the dead weight.

Of course this issue is not strictly limited to government, it can happen to some degree in any old, large bureaucratic organization. But since most government agencies fall into that category, and exist in perpetuity, and rarely if ever face budget cuts, it's more pervasive in government than in private industry.

Making these kinds of generalizations are not very helpful. What is X, what was the screw up, here, here, here, and what's the best way to handle it? Sometimes privatization IS the answer, but jumping to it can lead to crony capitalism, favoritism, secret deals and even worse outcomes than before. Frankly, I always thought the best examples of slow, opaque, inefficient bureaucracy were in federal government agencies - then I had to deal with Northrop Grumman.

One major issue that must be considered when privatizing, is the function that is being privatized. If you have a service provided by government that can wholly be done by private companies and provide better and more efficient service to citizens, it's certainly a candidate to consider. What is often done, though, is outsourcing of internal functions, such as accounting or IT or, as in this case, facility management. The problem is that when these things are privatized, it's done though legislation, the function is handed over to a company, government employees are laid off or transitioned, and now the actually customer, which is the agency still providing services. But now they are stuck with basically a monopoly providing those services. Due to the top-down nature of control from the legislature and administration, the agency itself is unable to control the costs and service levels. I've seen agencies lay off front-line service employees to cover increasing costs from their private IT contractor. They are unable to fire or hold their service company to account - they have to lobby the legislators or legislative oversight committees to do that. And the contractor has their own lobbyists. This is where "privatization" goes horribly wrong.

I don't know about earthworms, but I did hear years ago that the native species of lady bug in North America had been entirely supplanted by an Asian variety, and there were no native Lady Bug species left.

The theory of black holes did not come from any observations of physical phenomenon, it came from studying Einstein's theories. The math suggested the possibility of singularities, but at first no one thought they would actually exist in our universe. Of course now we know that black holes DO exist, so those theories are validated. Now we're just trying to figure out how to reconcile with OTHER theories.

It's known as "crony capitalism", or "Public-private-partnerships (PPP)", and we called it Fascism in the 1930's and 1940's. Leadership on the "progressive" or "liberal" side is at least as guilty of promoting these things as conservative culture, in fact it seems to be conservatives that want to back away from it, while the Democrats are doubling-down. It was the Democrat governor Mark Warner that handed all of Virginia's IT work over to Northrop Grumman many years ago. And, of course, the liberal appointees at Obama's HHS that outsourced the HealthCare.gov website for millions of dollars more than should have been spent to do it.

Yes, I took it, too. I read all through their terms-of-service fine print, too, and there is nothing there granting them any access to, or additional rights to use, any data or tracking information about me. That is, there was no change in privacy policy stuff for signing up for the Rewards+ program. So whatever data they are selling, they are not collecting / selling more of it than they were before.

I suspect that what they are selling is eyeballs to advertisers or merchants that want access to Verizon's customers. And you get "points" for actually becoming a patron with one of their partners / advertisers.

I went to Verizon's site to check on this for my account. Here's what I got:

My Rewards+

SHARING ONLINE JUST GOT FASTER!

Great news, you are eligible for an upload speed to equal your current download speed, at no additional cost to you! Simply click here and enroll in our My Rewards+ program - it’s easy and free. Just our way of thanking you for being a loyal Verizon customer. Faster upload speed means better sharing experiences. That’s Powerful! Join Now

Plus, military weaponry is just about the only US export still bringing in money. Civil wars or border disputes crop up, and the US companies get to sell to both sides. Of course, I'm sure State Department advisers would NEVER do anything to encourage those conflicts...

It's not that simple. This isn't adding cards and cables to an existing interconnect, it's installing a whole new one. In fact, Netflix will be co-locating servers with content either within or close to Verizon's data centers. So there is lots of logistics involved.

Chinese work has actually been pretty loose for a long time.