Amazon will be building and operating large warehouses in these two cities. So there will be property taxes and other business taxes (inventory, utility?) as well as income tax on the workers and sales tax on the purchases made by the workers and property taxes on homes owned by the workers etc.

And wikipedia says: The W80 is physically quite small, the "physics package" itself is about the size of a conventional Mk.81 250 pounds (110 kg) bomb, 11.8 inches (30 cm) in diameter and 31.4 inches (80 cm) long, and only slightly heavier at about 290 pounds (130 kg).

The average person couldn't pass an LSAT, doesn't understand deductive and inductive reasoning, yet you think they can make a useful contribution to the legal system? That would be like having people who don't know the difference between power and energy to design the power grid. Or someone who doesn't understand the difference between a pointer and data to write software. Etc.

These people are too lazy or scared to sign a letter beginning the process of making an individual claim yet you somehow expect them to go to court on their own and make a case? Do you not see how contradictory this is?

And Solyndra lost money on every panel they shipped. Not a sustainable business model.

Fracking.

GroundSmart Copper Clad Steel Cable is not a telecom cable. It is a ground cable, intended for direct burial without any insulating jacket. It does not carry signal or any power (normally). This is the kind of thing it is intended for: http://www.w8ji.com/ground_systems.htm

You seem to be assuming that all of the money was spent locally but I suspect a lot of expensive machines in the fab were purchased from outside of Austin.

A varying supply without storage is not good for a varying load unless the variations match. In the case of wind, usually not.

I'm impressed that he makes his own rocket motors (along with all the other stuff).

The nice thing about solar thermal is that if it were ever desired, the operating hours and/or output can easily be extended by quickly adding a cheap natural gas burner as a heat supplement. If the turbines become a limiting factor, they are relatively quick to add also (compared to other parts of a power plant). Ivanpah was deliberately sited near a natural gas pipeline for this reason.

The CFL spiral tube has to be shaped by hand and is very labor intensive. The glass of an incandescent light bulb can be machine molded. Thus, cheap labor is a bigger advantage in the manufacture of CFLs than incandescent light bulbs.

should hurt bandwidth too much ->
should not hurt bandwidth too much