At least if you're getting robbed, you have a shot at kicking the guy's ass, and you get to look him in the eye. It's honest, even if it's wrong. There's something to be said for that.

The problem isn't government size. A government small, yet equally bought out by corporate interests, would be at least as bad as the situation today, only the qualify of life for the people on the bottom of the socio-economic ladder would be quite worse.

But what you end up with is backwards laws getting passed in backwards places. It almost never happens the way you're describing -- it's almost always just the opposite. The bigger the picture, the more normalizing influence you have to protect minority opinions and views.

So yes, it's important that people in big cities and liberal areas force the backwater places not to pass idiotic laws.

Ron Paul has is wrong.

I was thinking the exact same thing. Why not just use an msi? Many exe installers are just wrappers for an msi anyway. Honestly, I don't want some random kludge of an installer trying to modify parts of my system, the registry, registering dll's, writing to protected directories, and so on. Msi is the way to go. If you're a windows admin, you can even have them push out and installed. It's super annoying to have some dumb vendor software that actually requires a technician to go to each computer and installed it manually. (Though a really good windows admin can probably use some tricks and scripts to do it anyway.)

From what I can tell doing some brief research, private prosecution used to be common, but in the U.S. is it unheard of. According to wikipedia, the last documented case with a private prosecutor was in 1975.

I believe the SCOTUS ruled on a case last year that touched on the issue, but they declined to address it.

I think anyone who'd protest evictions and foreclosures, given the criminal actions on the part of banks that both caused the problem AND profited off it, should be considered a hero. I'd be much more apt to listen to what she had to say, because she's not just sitting on her ass wringing her hands about how bad things are. I honestly wish we had so much protesting that you needed a SWAT team to evict a family from a home because daddy lost his job and can't afford the mortgage on unemployment.

A minor concern might also be wasted cycles in terms of power consumption. It may not seem like much, but if your software is going to be used by a lot of people, and it needlessly churns the processor, it could add up over time to electricity costs that are not negligible, and could justify some optimization.

The internet situation is still better than the health care situation, though. Internet prices have fallen or remained the same while service levels increased.

Health care has gotten more expensive while service levels have fallen.

I actually think handing the reigns of the health care system over to Comcast might be an improvement... and that's sad to say.

At the expense of replying to my own post:

I'm a little upset this is only for people with children in school. If you're just poor, you're out of luck. I am specifically thinking of seniors, but also the unemployed and perhaps homes with children who are either too young for school, or children in college. For the unemployed, they could use it to try and find work. With gas prices being what they are, $9.95 is much cheaper than driving/bussing to the unemployment office or library to use a computer, and cheaper than subscribing to a local newspaper. They could also gain job skills if they wanted to use it to find free training materials online.

As for seniors, I think there have been plenty of studies that show a wide array of activities -- almost all of them available via the internet -- can help keep their minds agile, and stave off senility. It might not be much, but it could reduce some burden on Medicare, as seniors could live on their own longer rather than living in a nursing home, or injure themselves less.

I think the potential economic benefit of internet for the poor is more than enough to justify whatever subsidies or tax breaks Comcast is getting for doing it.

Looks like it's a 1.5/384 connection.

http://www.internetessentials.com/faq/index.html

Surely you realize they vote on the basis of "traditional marriage" and "pro life" values.

It's not that easy to retrain. I'm 27, and I lost a pretty good job doing some programming and support stuff for when the small engineering company I worked for changed ownership (I got outsourced), and decided to go back to school and get an engineering degree. Unfortunately, it isn't looking so good. Even with a Stafford loan the Pell grant, I'm not sure if I can afford it this year. Even "working my way" through is hard, because jobs are scarce around here. There are enough people out of work that employers don't have to fool with someone with a class schedule. It's not as if I'm a dunce, I have a 4.0 (though I'm only a sophomore), and I've tried getting scholarships, but most of them are specifically for kids coming in right out of high school.

Sometimes not being cynical is difficult. It's rough to see other students getting additional need-based aid arbitrarily, while I'm on a "waiting list", especially when a lot of them are breezing through with a C in something like English or Art.

As someone who lives in Tennessee, I don't really blame Gore for losing here in 2000. Gore's political ideas were far too progressive for this backwater hellhole. Mainly, he wasn't christian enough, in that he had respect for non-Christians, and in that he relied heavily on science for making decisions, rather than the bible. It really would have been wasted effort if he'd tried. I mean, the people here think that god punishes america with natural disasters because of abortions and gays.

Ref: http://www.healthreform.gov/reports/youngadults/index.html

I am curious how many people who are young and healthy that can afford health insurance actually elect not to purchase it. I think if they can afford it, they probably have a reasonably good job, and most of those provide health care. I really don't see this segment of the population that is supposedly "abusing" the system, as it were. I'm young and more or less healthy, and the only time I've been able to afford health insurance, it was being provided to me by my employer. Of course, I've since been laid off and decided to go to college, and I definitely cannot afford health insurance, but I certainly wish I could.