You don't seem to understand the tremendous power the executive has. The president doesn't just sign laws, he gets to execute them. Thus, the Executive Branch. That means he gets to decide how they are implemented (laws are intentially left vague), gets to decide how many resources are dedicated to implementing them, sets general policy, etc. An examination of the history of, say, transportation in this country would be most enlightening, I think. The Executive branch has wide-reaching powers. That's why it matters.

No. Those dollars are used to hire contractors, etc., all from your "free market," which is just "the market." There is no separation between government spending and any other spending. It all goes to the same places.

Are you noticing any of the chipset framerate issues with Sandy Bridge? I'm looking to build an HTPC out of them but it sounds like waiting for Ivy Bridge might be a better idea given the chipset issues.

You're not the only one. Transportation is often a larger part of a family's budget than housing. This is because we've built our transportation system almost exclusively on roads and our metropolitan areas almost exclusively around sprawl. It's no wonder people are driving further than ever to get to work and paying more for their car than their house.

This is flamebait but I'm compelled to respond.

Because racism is not "thoughts." I find it helpful to distinguish bigotry from racism. I consider bigotry to be in the realm of individual thoughts. Racism is about power. Racism is more about social constructions than individual thoughts and actions. For example, Jim Crow laws are racist.

Racism is indeed the cause of your observations. Education disparity is a gigantic problem in this country. It's difficult to overcome because we have several centuries of public policy in place that closed educational opportunities to people of color. We've eliminated most of the official policies but we have hundreds of years of effects of those policies to undo. Simply fixing the law isn't enough. We've set an entire class of people on a certain track for hundreds of years and it will take active undoing of that to set them on a different track.

When you don't have access to basic education, you don't have access to higher education. If you get rid of the legal barriers now you have to deal with all sorts of cultural issues such as teachers not understanding your background and experience as a person of color, lack of teachers who have shared that experience and so on. This is very complicated stuff, not easily changed by simply repealing some laws. Maybe you'll dismiss it as "touchy-feely" nonsense but I assure you that every person of color I've engaged around this stuff tells me it's real, whether they are Black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American or whatever.

Drug and alcohol abuse follows. When you have little hope to get a job because demonstrated bias in employment still exists, what motivates you to even try? That's not an excuse, it's simply reality. Some blame it on "inferior culture" or similar nonsense but imagine growing up and seeing your grandfather, your mother, you father, your brother and your sister treated like dirt. I don't know about you, but that would get to me.

I will honestly say I struggle with the single mother family statistics. My wife and I talk about this from time to time, trying to figure out where that comes from. I don't know. But when I see a strong trend in a group, I tend to think that there is something deeper driving that trend than simply a culture of irresponsibility. We have to ask ourselves why we observe what we do, not simply blame people for the observation.

There's that bigotry thing. Start passing laws motivated by an attitude like that and it becomes racism. No people is "broken" and the poor and opporessed can rarely help themselves.

Actually, a lot (maybe most) hardware is not a commodity. We still build a lot of hardware here in the U.S. All kinds of embedded gadgets get designed here and a good number of them are manufactured here. They are quite profitable. A lot of supercomputing hardware is still built here and almost all of it is designed here.

While I agree that software is important (and lucrative) we can't just give up on building hardware. At the very least, doing so has a bunch of national security implications.

The core cities were in no way "shut down" during or after any storm last year. Frankly, I was amazed how well the city crews did given the parking challenges they face that suburban municipalities generally don't. I live in Minneapolis very close to downtown. We were fully functional throughout the winter.

Minnetonka is a big city, geographically. While you're right that not all of it is super-wealthy, almost all of it is wealthy. And while the eastern border is about a 20 minute drive from Minneapolis, reaching the lake takes at least 40 minutes from Minneapolis without traffic so it's not exactly close.

This is a data center. There is absolutely no reason it needs to be physically close to its customers. I don't think there are many large corporate headquarters near where this thing would be. The Golden Triangle in Eden Prairie is possibly the closest, or perhaps the Carlson Towers area. I totally believe the tax writeoff scam explanation. It's clearly a way to rig the system to suck even more money out of the general welfare.

You misunderstand the problem. Antibiotics are not the problem. The overuse of antibiotics is the problem. I hear about this every single week from my wife, who is a provider. She constantly gets pressured by patients to prescribe antibiotics when they are clearly not necessary or justified. We have to change the culture of medical care here in the U.S.

I do this all the time. I always buy as locally as I can both to support local businesses and to ensure that the public interest is served with the tax money I owe. Amazon does provide a nice review service, though I usually look other places first. That said, I will buy from an online retailer if I can't find the item anywhere else, which is distressingly more and more common.

I don't buy the "Amazon has no presence and thus no responsibility" argument. Amazon benefits hugely from local investments, from schools to roads (not fully paid for by the shippers, BTW), to public internet infrastructure. They have a responsibility to collect the taxes that contribute to upkeep of local infrastructure.

This is really overdue. Not only does sales tax exemption create an unfair advantage for out-of-state retailers (which is bad for the local and thus national economy), it depletes funding for civilization. And yes, Amazon does use public infrastructure to operate its business and no, shippers do not pay the Amazon's share of that infrastructure. Amazon uses all sorts of local services. Amazon operates as part of our civilization and thus should be contributing to its upkeep.