At $67K/yr 'average' teachers each earn more than the average US household.

Their income is, by definition, above average.

http://finance.townhall.com/co...

Employers got into providing health insurance to employees as a way to increase employee compensation when the government changed the tax code and made it a deductables business expense and tax-free for the worker in the 1940s.

http://www.zanebenefits.com/bl...

Even more odd is that you think that the fiscal insanity was caused by fiat currency, when in fact, most was caused by lack of regulation, mortgage originators who had no fiscal stake in the process, leading to mortgages to people who never should have them, and the insanity ne plus ultra - the 50 year morgage. a favorite of 80 year olds.

And it was all federally backed to help make sure everyone had their chance at "the American Dream"!

My personal favorite was the 110% mortgage - loaning money to people that not only didn't have a down payment, they also lacked the money to cover closing costs...

It really doesn't help that much of the "you should buy gold!" press in the last five years has come from people who have a vested interest in the price of gold rising (like Glenn Beck) so they can sell it off at a profit and recent buyers will be hit with a loss.

You do understand that gold dealers advertise on shows like Glenn Beck's, and I've heard commercials for the same gold merchants on left-leaning shows like Randi Rhodes...

His 'vested interest' ends when the check for the paid advertisement clears.

Pretty much the opposite situation from the one Beck et all describe would actually happen if we went back to the gold standard.

Beck "et all" (sic) don't try and predict the future, they argue that gold is a good hedge against inflation - at the turn of the last century (1900) you could buy a nice tailored suit and a steak dinner with a $10 gold coin, some 100 years later you can still buy a tailored suit and steak dinner with that very same $10 gold coin...

If Walmart (in your example) gives receipts without the identifier for the card, the buyer will have to trust that Walmart activates the card - the buyer will have no recourse with your anonymized receipt if they buy an inactivated card.

Is a COmmon Business Oriented Language, right Grace Hopper?

Or, he just mistakenly typed '@gmail.com' instead of '@gs.com'

Before autocorrect, people used to make this kind of mistake all the time, it was so common we had a name for it - we called it a 'typo', and we were forced to take ownership of the mistake.

Now we either call it txt-speak or we blame it on auto-correct.

Why can't something be both charitable and self-serving at the same time

So, let's say a company (IBM) "donates" code that allows an Open Source software package support some unique (patented) feature on their hardware.

Is that charity, or a marketing expense to help the company sell more hardware?

Seriously, what 'Wiki' are you quoting? Why not quote actual IRS regulations?

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf...

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf...

A couple points - first off, there were hundreds of Patriot/Tea Party groups that applied, not just one monolithic Tea Party organization - each application was unique and individual.

I'm not sure how many of what you refer to as 'Occupy' applications were submitted, by your use I assume it was one.

The Occupy group that got a denial is actually years ahead (literally) of several dozen Patriot/Tea Party organizations that are still waiting YEARS LATER for a decision up or down on their application... So what? A group can not appeal a decision until it is rendered, by denying the Patriot/Tea Party groups a decision, they denied them the chance to appeal, and the appeal process would overturn baseless political denials. A delayed decision is effectively an unappealable denial - your 'Occupy' group, by getting a denial, could appeal - the Patriot/Tea Party groups can not.

Your lone counter-example proves/dis-proves nothing.

BTW, did your 'Occupy' group have their private donor information shared by IRS employees with other, non-governmental groups? Tea Party groups had their donor lists handed over by the IRS to Democrat groups...

You would benefit from an expansion of your news sources to include, maybe source documents and/or actual, under-oath testimony from the people involved...

If one of their treeâ(TM)s shade falls on a cafe table and cools the cafeâ(TM)s patrons as they enjoy their espressos, does that mean the tree-planting organization is no longer a charity?

If the cafe, through it's donation, is able to direct where the charity puts it's trees AND the charity places the tree in a location solely for the benefit of the cafe, then that charity is (in my mind) no longer a charity, it is at least a part-time landscaping firm.

Unless they hire women/minorities directly out of this program, this does nothing to change the mix of new hires at Google.

How many programmers hired at Google are only high school graduates? Have only two year associate degrees? Bachelors degrees?

Google wants to hire 'the best of the best' and someone who's interest was sparked by an offer of free classes isn't likely to be 'the best if he best', and even if they were, how would their application ever get past Google HR, beating out Ivy League PHDs?

you don't really think Google is going to hire everyone who graduates this silly little code school, do you?

Not one 'graduate' of this three month 'school' will ever get hired by google - ever.

So google will underwrite a few thousand three month programming classes so that those women who never programmed before will be qualified to work a google?

As for your vegetable soup example, what Google is really doing is more along the lines of this:

"I want vegetable soup now, but all I have are potatoes. So I go out and buy a few thousand packets of vegetable seeds and hand them out to people."

If Google wants to hire more women, they can do it quite easily - they simply start hiring more women. If they have to lower their hiring standards to accomplish that, that is their choice.

Simply put, google feels bad about it's white male dominated workforce, but rather than change hiring practices they are throwing money at this and treating it as a PR problem.

I can pretty much guarantee you that not one person that gets free tuition for this three month programming course will ever work at Google...

50-51% female birth rate, with actual population skewed a bit more towards women because they live longer (on average).