Few people have personal experience with "a large percentage of cases around the country", and those who do should generally have something they can cite to back up their claims.

It is equally immoral to take the earned product of someone's labor to give it to someone else. If you don't want to be a heartless bastard, then don't be one: give whatever you want to whomever you choose. However, if you take it away from someone you think is less deserving to give it to someone you think is more deserving, then you are a thieving bastard. Using the government to do your work for you is just as bad as doing it yourself.

Of course, you are in the best position to judge your circumstances. Just wanted to put some food for thought out there. You might also want to keep in mind that there are real costs to the employer for firing/hiring, and they would have to balance that (and the whole going-to-hell thing) against the possible benefits to them.

Besides that, occasionally you will find that that there are decent human beings that just don't "get it" overseeing these things. If you are subtle and avoid the "screw you guys, I'm slacking" confrontations, someone might realize there are real issues to deal with and do the decent thing, especially if there are people around who recognize your value. Again, depends a lot on circumstances.

Good luck...

Here's a thought: stop working longer hours; you are just reinforcing management's bad behavior. At this point you are clearly too important to sack, so no worries there. Do your excellent job at a reasonable pace, and keep a backlog of things you have to do, making it available to interested parties who wonder why things aren't getting done faster. And when new work arrives, let them know that while you would be more than happy to fix their problems right away, there is a pile of other stuff to get through first, so it will have to wait. And most of all, stop worrying about it. It may be that nobody ever wises up and get you some technical help, but at least you'll be less overworked, and maybe a bit happier.

What we really need are proper apprenticeships, where there is an agreement between the employer and apprentice where the former provides training -- along with compensation commensurate with obtained skills and effort, over time -- in return for service. This could replace full-time college studies in many cases, with apprentices taking individual classes that would prove valuable as needed.

No, it would make them the Free Software, Non-Free Non-Software Foundation. FSNFNSF.

This is like the Vatican releasing a paper with suggestions on how to pick a religion.

True or not, the agreement is assigning copyright on future speech, presumably to allow for DMCA takedowns of "offending" speech, not actually restricting future speech. Really underhanded and sneaky, but to my non-legally-trained eye, not necessarily unconstitutional.

Anyone interested in designing a peer-to-peer analogue of USENET News?

While Approval Voting is arguably an improvement over simple first-past-the-post voting, it doesn't allow for voters to express preference among those they can live with. Instant Runoff Voting is a little more complicated, but still understandable, and allows voters to express preference, not just acceptance. There are other voting systems with additional desirable properties, and it is worth reading up on them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system

Quiet! You're legitimizing the War On Drugs! After all, if we are literally under assault by drug smuggling then we have to respond with military action, right?

Except, of course, that penta- is from the Greek; quint- would be the Latin.

There are the support costs when the user can't figure out how to configure it.

AES? PSK? What the heck are those things?
What do you mean it doesn't work if everything isn't set up the same?
I just want it to work. Why won't it work?

Companies have to pay people to answer these questions.

I'm not saying it isn't a good idea, just that there are actual costs.