There's a good risk of loss in many cases (see the history!)

Taken as a whole, government investments like have very rarely lost. Even in the contentious past 5 years, the government investment in emerging technologies have been very profitable, even with the poster boys like Solyndra which are used to argue that all government investment in technology is a bad idea. This argument is usually made on the Internet, which is more than a little bit ironic.

Did Tesla have to pay a penalty for early repayment?

Early repayment penalties are illegal in most of the US.

The benefit of this kind of loan program is not in the interest earned, but in the fact that you get a successful company that creates jobs and pays taxes, which used to be considered a good thing. Having an additional player in a heavy industry also creates competition in a fairly consolidated sector, which also used to be considered a good thing.

These kind of government loans to business in the US go back to the 18th century, and were considered a very good idea until recently, when one of the two political parties lost its mind.

First time I went down on a girl I was surprised to discover it was a little bit like licking a (dead) 9-volt battery. Turned out she had an exceptionally low pH level (high acidity).

You know how you can power a clock with a potato? I wonder...

It's even noticeable when you have sex with another partner who has a different PH.

I can only imagine the blank looks on the faces of Slashdot users reading that sentence.

Arthur Prysock.

Linking to Prysock gives you credibility.

Linking to a Fox News poll does not. Do I have to remind you just how far off Fox's polls have been when it comes to Obama?

This is a moral discussion.

it's worth noting that what Apple does is probably considered morally acceptable by Apple. Why should I give the original poster's opinion on moral acceptability any more weight than Apple's?

If you were to explain exactly what Apple has done to 100 Americans chosen randomly from the phone book, I bet you'd get 90-plus to say that Apple was acting immorally.

Apple doesn't have a defined share of taxes.

They kind of do. It's called the "corporate tax rate". Further, on the moral side, at least you could say that Apple's share of taxes should be enough to cover the expense that the US government goes through to protect Apple's patents, no? Given the number of government organizations that are charged with the enforcement of intellectual property (everyone from Customs, Dept of Defense, CIA, FBI, State Department, Justice Department, etc), we can come up with a number of what the government is giving Apple directly. You don't believe Apple should be getting welfare do you? Or do you? And that doesn't even include the use of the infrastructure and the legal system (of which Apple makes very profitable use).

The problem with my "representation" is that it is diluted by a lot of other people.

So, you admit that you don't like the American system of government and the Constitution. It's good that we get that out of the way because now we're actually having an honest discussion.

I'll just leave this here:

http://www.ibtimes.com/obama-approval-rating-not-suffering-benghazi-irs-ap-scandals-cnn-poll-1269577

Doubtles there is plenty of lying, but I think you're too cynical.

I've been looking into the losing sides of conflicts, and disasters, trying to see what is typical of human behavior in such stressful situations. And here we see a lot of second guessing, attempts at self justifications and at shifting the blame, and coverups. Most people just aren't honest when honesty requires admitting that maybe they screwed up, or expected too much. Not surprising, I suppose.

Some examples. In the US Civil War, Lee took full responsibility for the loss at Gettysburg, saying that he asked more of his men than they could deliver, and offering to resign. In contrast, Jefferson Davis and General Joseph Johnston constantly bickered over each other's decisions and expectations. Davis was very disappointed that Johnston did not attack to try to lift the siege of Vicksburg, accusing Johnston of not being aggressive enough. Later, Johnston defended Georgia against Sherman, slowly retreating until they had reached Atlanta, whereupon Davis relieved Johnston. The new commander, Hood, could not save Atlanta either, and lost a great number of men in reckless assaults trying to do so. One thing that struck me about this was that Davis seemed near delusional about the Confederacy's capabilities and chances. But both talked as if the war wasn't all but hopeless, as if a change of strategy, style or character in the other could have lead to a Confederate victory, and blame for the eventual Confederate loss could therefore be laid squarely at the feet of some or all of the leaders, instead of the enormous imbalance in power between the 2 sides. But such an acknowledgement would only mean that the blame could be pushed back further, to the people who started the whole war, who should have realized it wasn't winnable. Sherman made this point, trying to tell the southerners that given the strengths of the 2 sides, they were crazy for trying to rebel, and it would only lead to the devastation of the South, as indeed happened. Hitler's attitude as revealed in his final message in which he blamed the German people for not trying hard enough and for not being worthy of him, was similar.

More recently, the Northeast blackout of 2003 has been fairly well documented, but there are some features of it that remain, well, dark. I recall a report that noted that during the blackout, allergies everywhere cleared up. Some years later when I tried to hunt this report down, I couldn't find it. Only thing I was able to turn up was a report about asthma, not allergies. Maybe I misremembered? But that's just the sort of information industries are so notorious for trying to suppress. They've done it over and over, with asbestos, bisphenol A, nicotine, radium, and lead. "Doubt is our product". Fukushima also featured a lot of lying and covering of asses. The propaganda is so pervasive, I suspect toxic chemicals and pollution have a lot more to do with our current obesity epidemic and other health problems than the public realizes. The public has been fooled into buying our laziness, bad dietary choices, and bad genes as the major and perhaps sole reasons for the obesity. All the easier, as there is a lot of evidence pointing that way. And now a new culprit has come to light, the bacteria in our guts. But when this is all over, I imagine future histories of the late 20th and early 21st centuries will finger the explosion in indiscriminate use of novel chemicals as the reason behind a lot of our current troubles, just as we now know that lead poisoning played a large part in the fall of the Roman Empire.

Reading the above, I am *so* glad I live in a country with free healthcare for all.

Go ahead, rub it in.

I honestly can't see how anyone who can make a sane argument against that.

If you're the majority shareholder of a HMO organization that owns hundreds of hospitals and a US senator at the same time, you may still not be able to make a sane argument against it, but you're going to try like hell.

Nobody has shown that what Apple has done shouldn't be morally acceptable.

I know I'll regret responding to such an obvious troll, but...

1) When a company like Apple avoids/evades paying taxes, it hurts the free market by taking for themselves an advantage that other companies can or do not. Primarily, a company the size of Apple does this by using its tax advantage to press anti-competitive advantages by buying up other companies. If you or I wanted to buy a company that Apple also wanted to buy, and the company cost $1billion, Apple would basically be able to buy that company for $700million while we would have to pay the full $1billion. By using this advantage to destroy competition, there is greater consolidation and greater loss of competition. Pretty soon, it's not really a market at all, much less free.

If you believe a "free market" is a force for good, then what Apple is doing is bad.

2) By not contributing their share of taxes (the same share that other companies have to pay), Apple uses public assets without paying for them, forcing the shortfall onto the rest of us and their competitors. Bad for us, and bad for the free market.

3) Stealing is immoral. Even you would probably agree that taking something that you have not paid for is immoral. Apple uses a lot of common resources, from infrastructure to the legal system, at a much higher rate than most people (or companies) by not paying their share of the costs, those costs are shifted on to us. In the language of the American Right, Apple is "stealing from future generations".

4) Lying is immoral. Here's one of Apple's tax "avoidance" scams: They register a patent in the United States. This forces the United States government to use resources to protect Apple's patent rights. Then, Apple transfers the ownership of that patent to a company that does not exist in Ireland, which pays its fees to another company that does not exist in say, Holland (thus the famous "Dutch-Irish Sandwich"). Because the ownership of that patent is in the other country and removed further by paying license fees in the third country, Apple completely avoids any taxes at all. Yet, if an Apple patent is threatened, they sue in US court and the US government is called upon to protect Apple's patent. So, for the purposes of taxes, the patent is not American, but for the purposes of enforcement, the patent is American. I'm pretty sure you can see how this is immoral.

Further, I'm betting that Apple's claim that 2/3 of their profits come from outside the US and indeed outside the jurisdiction of any sovereign nation, Apple's lying. This is why they're going to settle this ASAP, because if the forensic accountants go to work on Apple's books, the penalties could be astronomical and Apple's already wounded share price would halve again.

5, 6 & 7: Corporations were given special status to protect investors and owners from direct liability, not to protect them from having to act in a moral way. You seem willing to absolve Apple from any moral responsibility for anything, yet you want them to be treated as a person for the purposes of political activities. So now the moral questions are directed at you, khallow.

Finally, if you believe that taxes are immoral on their face, I would remind you that the purpose of the American Revolution was not to achieve freedom from taxation, but rather from taxation without representation. You cannot make a persuasive argument that you are not represented. You may not like your representation, but that's the way our system was designed. If you don't like the American system, then we have a different discussion altogether.

Both the briber and the recipient (if the bribe was accepted), are guilty. We absolutely should bash Apple, and Exxon, GE, Amazon, and the rest of these tax dodging cheaters. If successful, it will make our society fairer.

That also includes propaganda organs masquerading as charities deserving of non-profit status. The current furor over the IRS's alleged partisanship in singling out Tea Party groups for a harder look does not take into consideration that they are overwhelmingly the ones trying to break those rules. The left didn't try that on anything like the scale the right did, so of course IRS investigations could seem biased. The hard right is not very bright, and really seems to have difficulty understanding that what they tried is wrong. They don't understand the difference between science and propaganda, and behave as if the end justifies the means. Cheating and lying is seemingly okay with them, and indeed is rationalized away as not cheating and lying as long as it's for a cause they favor, such as banning abortion and denying that there is mankind caused climate change. The ultimate refusal to acknowledge responsibility for anything is the total cop out "it's God's will". Yes, a pregnancy from a rape is God's intent, as is climate change, war, market crashes, nuclear accidents, and oil spills. "Stuff happens". All that could even be divine punishment for allowing homosexuals to marry.

The Republican Party has sunk to an unholy alliance of radical social conservatives of limited intelligence, and cunning but ultimately foolish and corrupt business interests who find those idiots useful whenever they want to employ the bullshit tactics of doubt and denial to suppress scientific or legal investigations which might hurt their profits, even though it would benefit us all, including them, to have dangers illuminated rather than denied. The contradictions have become ever more ridiculous, with them screaming about the supposed need to Balance the Budget, but refusing to even consider two major ways of doing so, which is to Raise Taxes or Cut Military Spending. Instead, the budget is to be balanced by cutting back on the policing of the rich.

As a matter of fact I never directly used Bitcoin.

Because you're not goofy.

Personally, I do all of my transactions in Darknet Credits, which is the new monetary system based on reputation and righteous deeds. I can't actually buy anything, but I'm in on the ground floor.

You've obviously not used Bitcoin a lot.

You could accurately say that everyone has obviously not used Bitcoin a lot.

On the contrary, it may be perfectly legal, even in the US. Lists of phone numbers and addresses, voting records of public servants, and other facts or assemblies of facts cannot be copyrighted. Even interpretations of historic events could be quotes of material that is no longer under copyright. A purely factual history book could quite possibly contain no copyrightable information. If on the other hand mere recountings of history are copyrightable, one wonders whether the authors stepped on others' copyrights. The historic information came from somewhere.

But all that is a minor point. Likely the history book has recent thinking of scholars about the deeper meanings of the historic events covered. If not, and there wasn't any copyrightable material in the draft, we can be pretty sure that the publisher added some no matter how inaccurate or irrelevant, to cover this exact situation.

The important part of this matter is that knowledge of history should be freely available to all citizens. If they don't have a copyleft history book, they should make one.

Wanted attention.