Another way to descript this would be:

Elon Musk structures his businesses to support government priorities.

In addition to being expensive as hell, the new HFA inhalers SUCK.

Buy them in Asia. A couple of years ago, I bought some Ventolin inhalers in India for the equivalent of $2 each. No prescription required.

Also, be aware that the active ingredients in inhalers run out before the propellant does. Unless you count uses, you may just be getting a lungfull of propellant only.

Obviously the CFC industry wasn't as big and powerful as the fossil fuels industries, didn't spend enough money obfuscating the issues, ....

Nonsense. The producers of CFCs realized that there was more money to be made in producing (and patenting) the replacements. As an example, look at the price of an Albuterol inhaler. Or think about the cost of recharging an A/C system in comparison to the cost before Freon was banned.

Years ago, I had a number of Nokia flip phones. I also converted emails to text messages and sent them to the phone (actually, probably MMS, not SMS), so that I could read my emails on a dumb phone.

However, every now and again, I would receive a "text of death". The phone would receive a text message, crash, reboot, attempt to download text messages again, crash .... etc.. It continued to do this until the network would decide to give up attempting to send that MMS message.

I had several phones of the same model and they all did this.

What if you emply a patent attorney and the attorney tells you that you don't infringe? In the past, this provided a defence against "willful infringment" claims. But now?

Remember, it's the shareholders that pay these fines. And no one in the bank corporation is held accountable.

Even worse, they got bonuses for their behaviour.

"Private vendors will provide drivers with small digital devices to track miles"

My car doesn't have a 12V outlet, you insensitive clod (and if it did, the polaritity would be reversed) -- car built in '57, with positive ground wiring.

These two are done. They're not going to work as cops ever again.

They may not work for a police department again, but there are probably many places where they can be hired as a sherriff's deputy. Even working as a police officer isn't beyond the realm of possiblity -- none of them was fired.

I wonder if the initial model for long-distance trucks will be trucks that runs 24 hours per day, while an attendant rides the truck for the few remaining manual task. Heck, you could have an outsourced programmer working 2 jobs at the same time: programming and baby-sitting the truck!. Increasing the number of hours per day that the truck runs is a significant increase in productivity.

Just like postal voting, Internet voting is a bad idea.

In a family group, you simply don't know who is really voting. Yes, the correct person may be marking the postal ballot, or clicking the votes, but a dominant family member can be looking over the voter's shoulder, making sure the vote corresponds to the dominant family member's preferences.

One would also need to admit that the US spends more per pupil than all but a small handful of countries

... and then compare the cost of living between those countries. Also (as you acknowledge), spending per pupil isn't the same as teacher salaries. Perhaps the overhead involved at the district, county and state levels needs to be looked at very carefully. Ask yourself, where are the nicest premises that any school district has? Probably it's the district offices.

Well which is it? Either you can hire other company's employees or you can't.

I hate to break it to you, but, in the USA, different states have different laws. In this case, the legality of non-compete agreements is different between CA and MA.

(sees parent modded up to 5, thinks: mods, you are idiots!)

There are lots of young unemployed people with education degrees, looking for an opportunity to teach.

Bullsh*t. Show me some reliable numbers. And not just of people who want to be teachers, but people who are qualified.

At least, here in California, to be a qualified teacher, you need a "Credential" in addition to a bachelor's degree, not an "education degree". From the experience of family members, I can tell you that there is no large pool of *good*, qualified teachers available.

You, like others, want to claim that there are good teachers available because you don't want to deal with the alternative -- admitting that teachers are underpaid.

Yes, but if you get rid of tenure first you can start increasing teacher pay for the BEST teachers instead of the ones who have been there the longest.

If you get rid of tenure, then you start firing teachers, how are you going to replace them? Do you imagine that there is a large pool of excellent and qualified teachers just waiting for the opportunity of a teaching job? You need to attract better people into the profession and for that, you need higher pay.