The problem with solar is that it requires an upfront investment that pays back over a long term but does not significantly increase the value of your home.

It may surprise you, but some people buy homes to live in them. Not to flip in 3 years for a profit.

And I don't believe there's enough data in various markets to know whether or not solar panels would increase the value of a house more than their installation price (which is coming down, by the way).

Sure they do. Corporatist Democrats play for the same team of rich elitists than Corporatist Republicans. Why do you think that no matter what else happens to the economy, the bankers always get their dough? No matter what happens to the economy, Wall Street gets taken care of first.

And no banker ever goes to jail.

Will you pay more?

Pay more for what? Dedicated servers? They had that figured out more than 10 years ago. How much more do you think it would cost to add dedicated servers to a game today? And yes, if people would pay $19.99 for some DLC that gives your character new hats, I'm pretty sure they'd pay for dedicated servers.

The reason they are not included is because Sony is so scared that there might be some kid in Slovenia playing a pirated version of their game. Not that the kid would actually ever pay for a Sony game, but they are outraged that there is a nickel in some kid's pocket that doesn't belong to them.

But yes, I'm sure that a legal attribute totally affects the digestibility.

For me, it does. Monsanto owning a license on a basic foodstuff makes me sick.

The idea of any corporation owning a license on the idea of a basic foodstuff makes me sick. That's something I just cannot digest.

And I can't imagine how improving food production will prevent hunger,

You don't know the story of "Golden Rice", do you?

Nonsense. Who even cares what party the Kochs are? Are they GOP or Tea Party or libertarians or who even knows how they vote. They're just corporatists, like Soros and Bloomberg.

They may not all be the same, but they all play for the same team.

manipulate the markets

You're full of shit. You think people who support Net Neutrality are the ones wanting to "manipulate the markets"?

The reality is italian bread and cold beer will tend to make you fat, if you don't carefully control quantities.

My point is that if you're restricting your diet to a very narrow selection of foods, you are almost certainly also controlling quantities without thinking about it.

It's not so much about what you eat, it's about eating thoughtfully. Be aware of what you're taking in. Know that drinking a 64oz Big Gulp is taking in a LOT of food. I'm sure there are people who sock away the soda pop who might say, "I didn't eat anything all day".

Whatever, something is making people hugely fat. Outrageously, amazingly, shockingly fat. Circus freak fat. Industrial accident fat. I mean, comic book supervillain fat. And it's not because they ate too much brown rice and vegetables, or even Italian bread and mozzarella.

I believe the food and chemical industries have been experimenting on humans for years without our consent. You never saw people this fat when you were little. Well, I don't know how old you are, but not when I was little. I mean, there were fat people, but they looked like, I don't know, Jackie Gleason, not fucking Jabba the Hutt in stretch pants. And not just one or two. If you move around the city during the day, you will see thousands of people who are not just a little plump, but enormously, freakishly fat. When I was little maybe I'd see one of those every year.

So, what's changed? I'm not sure people are eating that much more food. You know who else gets freakishly large in the past 20 years? Livestock. And you know what they eat? GMO corn. I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.

Not true. The taxes on gasoline and other fossil fuels far exceed the tax breaks for oil exploration.

Not if you start to examine the externalities of the fossil fuel industry.

Like the wars in the Middle East and the environmental cleanups. The money BP put into the Gulf repair wasn't but a small fraction of the costs. The rest have to be picked up by government. You and me.

The "coal subsidies" only affect the profit of a few politically connected democrats

Man, you're behind the times. I'm not talking about those subsidies. I'm talking about the externalities, like the health care costs for the people who get sick from coal, or the environmental costs of coal or the way coal destroys communities.

I'm not Republican.

You weren't the only one to start calling yourself an "independent" after GWB.

Possibly because marxism and its derivatives were responsible for the murders of over 100 million innocent people in the 20th century.

So, what the Kochs are saying is that if we have Net Neutrality 100 million people will die?

Well, that's reasonable. We should probably forget all about that Net Neutrality thing.

Next Koch campaign: "Net Neutrality is like Ebola!"

Not only does it disregard the Nordic socialist countries...

That's why you're not hearing talk radio mention "European-style Socialism" as much any more. They go right to talking about North Korea whenever they want to call someone a socialist. So, if you're talking about single-payer health care, it's like, "How's that working in North Korea". They can't mention Cuba, because they've got good health care, so it's always North Korea. Net Neutrality? North Korea. Minimum wage? "Why don't you just move to North Korea".

Have you Americans *still* not gotten over this whole Marxist/Communist/Socialist = EVIL thing yet?

Actually, we're getting there. During the past two elections, studies done about people's reaction to the word "Socialism" have shifted drastically. Among those under 30, there is actually a majority who see as a positive term.

Give it time.

I call it the "ABBA Effect". People have heard for years that Sweden is socialist, and then people saw ABBA on TV and thought, "Hey, they've got pop stars and hot chicks in short skirts over there! Maybe Socialism's not so bad after all." When you see people on "socialized" medicine who are happy and healthy with nice teeth and shapely asses, there is something subtle that shifts. It starts in the pants and slowly works its way towards the brain.

I think most people would agree net neutrality is a great idea in theory. You could say socialism is also good in theory. I don't mean to compare the two,

Of course you mean to "compare the two". You're doing the same Cold War red-scare bullshit that the Koch Brothers' mouthpiece, "American Commitment" is trying to do. By putting two terms side-by-side you're trying to equate them in the mind of people who are as incapable of analysis as you are.

And what's to stop the government from "leveling the playing field," giving additional network resources to failing energy companies, state education systems in favor of Common Core, public companies who need to better compete against private ones etc. ?

You don't know a single thing about Net Neutrality, do you? You don't have any idea what it means or what it's for. You saw "Koch Brothers" in the title of the post and you came here to fly your Republican flag, is all. "Common Core"... When you start name-checking Common Core you know you're deep in talk radio land.

Yet you're probably ok when George Soros and Michael Bloomberg do the same thing...

Is it all some stupid game to you of racking up points? Tit for tat? Are you still capable of any moral clarity?

Do you feel it instructive to name a list of rich guys just because there's an article reacting to something David Koch said and you've been told that these are the other side's rich guys? Is everything a matter of moral equivalence to you?

No wonder the US is in trouble. People have watched so much cable TV and listened to so much talk radio that they have lost the ability to evaluate anything clearly, and can only see it through a partisan lens. You felt you had to stick up for the Koch Brothers because your talk radio favorites have told you they're "one of us" and you've got two names you can lay down whenever someone says, "Koch Brothers". As if it meant something.

Do you even know what this discussion is about or are you just in react mode?

there is analysis

There's always analysis. The problem is, who's doing the analysis, what is their agenda, and who's tasked to act on said analysis.

I don't doubt that nuclear energy could be an amazing boon and used to a much greater extent, safely and profitably. If we could trust the energy industry and government regulators to do the right thing.

My analysis shows that's not the case, however.