Under US Law, which you say is "actually the same thing" as UK law in this regards, you are quite entirely wrong.

For images there is "BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY, LTD. v. COREL CORP., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999)" which held that:

[1] On November 13, 1998, this Court granted defendant's motion for summary judgment dismissing plaintiff's copyright infringement claim on the alternative grounds that the allegedly infringed works -- color transparencies of paintings which themselves are in the public domain -- were not original and therefore not permissible subjects of valid copyright and, in any case, were not infringed. [n1] It applied United Kingdom law in determining whether plaintiff's transparencies were copyrightable. [n2] The Court noted, however, that it would have reached the same result under United States law. [n3]

For your book example you say

Example: Say there is a text from a book written in the 1800's that is out of copyright in the US. I want to publish a copy of it, say, for a Kindle or even a discount-book print copy.

I have to find a printing of the source material that is out of copyright already. I need to have a physical book to get the text from that is over 75 years old (or whatever the appropriate copyright term is for that physical book).

I *can't* take a reprinting from 20 years ago and base it on that because *that* book IS copyrighted, even if the source material isn't.

You are wrong again. Facsimile editions (which preserve the layout) don't get a copyright. Even new printings (same words, new layout) don't get a new copyright on the words (they layout may or may not). New text, like new introductions or authors bios do. That doesn't mean publishers don't claim copyright, but it may mean they are invalid. Take a look at the Project Gutenberg FAQ

If all you are doing is laying down asphalt maybe it will go that quickly. After you have a few layers on a main road it takes longer because

1) you can't shut the road down completely
2) you can only work at night
3) you have to mill off the old layers first
4) you have to clean off the pavement right before laying asphalt
5) you have to put some sort of black goo down so the new asphalt sticks to the old
6) Whoever is doing the contracting seems to wait for random amounts of time between stages.
7) you do it in 5 mile chunks.

Near where I live there is a major interstate and it can take a month to re-pave, driving over the grooved pavement makes a lot of noise and the transitions from the grooved to old asphalt mean your car goes up a couple of inches.

I suspect 6 and 7 have more to do with bureaucracy/lowest bidder/political considerations than to technical reasons.

I agree.

If you were using Mosaic it must have been 1993 or later.

Funny thing though, I remember saying pretty much exactly the same thing in 1994. (Although I was looking at serving GIS related files at the time)

The child tax credit, like most other credits and deductions phase out as your income gets higher, so you shouldn't ever actually lose money. The way they phase out can get complicated, if your interested, IRS Publication 972 details how the phase-out happens.

IRA contribution limits also phase out in a similar way