The real issue stems from the retarded decision back in the high income tax bracket era of the early 20th century that led to the IRS allowing health insurance premiums to be tax-deductible from payroll. That fucking brain damaged decision led to our current clusterfuck of employer-provided health care.

Note that this was a side-effect of WW2.

During WW2, Wage and Price controls were put into effect for many industries.

Which left companies unable to attract talent by paying them more. So, some bright boy figured that he could offer free health insurance as a perk of the job (instead of higher pay).

By the time the dust of WW2 had settled, the current system of employer-provided health insurance was firmly established. Leading us inevitably to today....

While I believe the first two sentences of this argument are be true, I see no logical reason to infer the final sentence, which I think is false. This being the case, I find entire line of reasoning invalid.

So, you believe that the First Amendment is limited to speech with no artificial aids, eh?

Note that that would allow newspapers and news broadcasts to control information flow during a political campaign. Unless you intend to restrict Freedom of the Press as well.

Note that neither newscasters nor newspapermen are unbiased, and allowing them to decide what you are allowed to know about a particular candidate is at least as bad as the current situation.

Note also that the incumbent has an enormous advantage even if the news people are paragons of virtue to the last man - all an incumbent has to do to get press attention is propose a law. His challenger(s) get no such instant attention.

So, your ideal solution guts the Freedom of Speech, the Freedom of the Press, OR it gives incumbents an enormously LARGER advantage....

contrary to that tenement.

Not sure where slums fit into your argument, so I'm assuming you meant "tenet"....

Yes, they could.

And the owners could still spend their money on politics.

Note that stripping corporation status from a business does NOT remove its money. It just changes (possibly) who is in control of the money. And the (hypothetical) new owners of the money can still spend it on politics....

Actually 3/4 of the states can call for a Convention.

2/3 of the States can call a Constitutional Convention.

Which bypasses the need for Congress to act, but leaves in place the need for 3/4 of the States to ratify any proposed Amendments.

What sort of humidity conditions do you have though?

I'm in New Orleans. 80% humidity is considered a dry day. Usually it's more like 90+F/90+% humidity.

We tend to run AC nine months of the year here. It's not all that common to run your AC in December here, but it's not unusual enough to comment on....

Air conditioners use a lot of power in the summer, when its 82F and 100% humidity

82F????

I wish it were that cool here. And we're not even to the hot part of the year yet.

Your reference goes back 1.35 MY.

OP was going back 60 MY.

Note that your period is 2.25% of the OP's period....

Who reads a book twice?

Actually, everyone I know who actually reads for pleasure does it from time to time. Including me.

Which reminds me, we're coming up on the sesquicentennial of Gettysburg. Time to pull out one of my histories of that battle and reread it before the Fourth.

In my county, for every dollar spent by a rider, the taxpayer pays two dollars.

Just read an article about a new bus route being added near where my parents live.

It is intended, of course, to allow for commutes into metropolitan area nearby...

So, the article broke down the costs of the system into Federal, State, Local, individual costs. The individual riders of the system were expected to pay ~17% of the cost of the system. The remaining ~83% was covered by taxpayers at various levels.

Even with that level of subsidization, they were expecting an average of only 30 people per day to be using the system....

the second amendment is only tangentially related to a militia

That would only be true if one had never read the Militia Act.

Hint: it's not even in the fine print that pretty much every American citizen is a member of the Militia.

Here in america my power bill consists of only one part, and I have the choice of whether to go fuck myself or allow the regional monopoly to price gouge me for electricity.

Interestingly enough, German residential electric rates are up to four times as high as US rates (Hawaii pays about as much as Germany, New England and Alaska half as much, everywhere else considerably cheaper)

Finnish rates, on the other hand, are comparable to New England's rates. In other words, more expensive than anywhere but Alaska and Hawaii.

So, if you're being "gouged", I take it you live in Hawaii? Because otherwise, your "gouged" is probably lower than anyone in Europe is paying....

Also, there is now a strategic security/economical/political dimension to the energy transition for Germany much like there is for the USA concerning Oil independence that has only been reinforced by the Ukraine crisis.

Two things:

1) The USA is a net exporter of petroleum products (we import some oil, but export more refined petroleum products than the oil we import makes) these days.

2) Increasing dependence on natural gas rather than coal by Germany makes them more vulnerable to things like the Ukraine situation.