For $12.5B you get:

$3.2 in cash
$2.35 billion from Motorola Home sale
$1B billion in real estate
some deferred tax assets.
patents

Looks like a far better deal than Apple and Microsoft got for $4.5 billion in Nortel patent purchase.

I would say it probably has to do more with Microsoft doing a lot of work to make ActiveX safer and browsers like Firefox and Chrome taking increasing market share.
Before that Internet Explorer had such a large market share and so many easier attack vectors than Java plugins.
And after constant stream of security updates Flash is probably a bit harder nut to crack than Java is.

The day you start trusting the Heritage Foundation over CBO is the day you need to admit that you are looking for an echo chamber and not unbiased data.

$5 a day would result in $550B a year revenue to the treasury, single handily eliminating the long term Federal deficit. There is absolutely nothing in the current proposal that would come even close to that.

I am glad that after all these years, the tradition of posters on slashdot not reading the article continues. :-)
Even if global warming is completely bogus, I for one will gladly pay 50c a day if it means:

Fewer people dieing from black lung disease.
Cleaner air.
Not having to invade countries for their natural resources.
Funding for new technology based solutions to our energy supply.

And finally, for those that claim cap and trades is the end of capitalism, pricing of public goods is one of the corner stones of capitalism.

Your data does not include the fast that the USA also has a ridiculous number of corporate tax deductions.

Average company in S&P 500 had tax rate of 26% between 2002 and 2006, probably the lowest in developed world.

Recent space solar power article from The Economist

http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12673299