I don't recall hearing much in the way of incidents involving lithium-containing batteries combusting during shipping. This leads me to wonder which of the following is going on. Is it:
1) A response to actual incidents?
2) An over-reaction to the potential of an accident, much like the no-electronic-gadgets rule on airplanes?
3) Something more sinister involving patents and/or protectionism?

Given the USPS's boneheaded management style (e.g. you still can't buy first-class postage on their site, only the much more expensive Priority and Express), I'm thinking option #2, but that's just speculation

The money has to come from *somewhere*. TANSTAAFL. A few things to note: The Senate bill would raise taxes permanently, and it will take ten years of that tax increase to cover one year of the student loan interest freeze. Secondly, the money cut in the House bill comes from a portion of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) which is pretty much just a slush fund. The proposal is to cut spending which hasn't happened yet. Third, it's good to have educated workers. But that education ain't worth much if potential employers can't hire the graduates, and taking money away from potential employers makes it that much harder for them to hire those graduates.

The author throws this premise and assumption in without giving it too much examination:

a majority of the consumers don't have a fast and reliable Internet connection. Once such connections become ubiquitous...

That's a big leap. Countries with high populations densities, such as those in Europe and the Far East, will have a much easier/cheaper time of building out the infrastructure for reliable high-speed internet to a vast majority of their population. Here in the US, however, it's a lot more expensive. Simply hand-waving the "once such connections become ubiquitous" ignores the cost of installing that infrastructure, and the time required to extend it to enough households.

Besides, a 1080p movie is going to suck a lot of bandwidth, and I'm guessing most people won't want to pay for a connection fast enough when they can save a few bucks with a slower connection. Not to mention the whole throttling/bandwidth cap issue.

I suspect you're not familiar with the specifics of the bill--it limits how much an individual can invest in such a company--only up to 10% of their income or $10k (whichever is less) in the less-restrictive version of the bill. It ain't gonna make any investor go bankrupt who isn't headed there already.

Crowdsourcing is not specifically illegal, but there are many regulations and laws which apply to companies that allow investments. For a small business, these regulations can be enormously onerous--rules for how finances are tracked, requirements for independent auditors, etc. Mostly, this bill waives the requirements for such a small business for the first few years. I think there's an assumption that the company will either die out in that period or become large enough that it can afford those regulatory expenses.

Those "subsidies" are nothing of the sort, actually--they're actually tax breaks, and they apply to pretty much every industry, not just to Big Oil.

Let's put some numbers to it as well. Annual car sales are about 6 million/year in the US. At a cost of $200/vehicle, that's a total incremental cost of $1.2B. That puts the "cost to save a life" at $1.2B/200 = $6 million per life saved, assuming that the backup cameras prevent every single death. I would posit that it's more likely to be half that effective at best, so $12M/live saved.

IMHO, such numbers put this proposal squarely in the same category as proposals to increase the required age/height/weight for children not to sit in booster seats--they result in a huge financial outlay by the public to offset a (statistically-speaking) relatively minor problem. The US sees about 2.4 million deaths per year. Two hundred is 8.3 thousandths of one percent of the death toll.

I would hardly call this a "novel" solution. It is as predictable as they come. "Got a safety problem? Add safety regulations or mandate safety devices!"

A truly novel solution (not that I'm suggesting this) would be something like "Kill someone while drunk driving? Spend the next 18 months cleaning puke off the toilets in bars."

There are a couple questions I have about the study:

1) How close was the correlation between the odd brain scans and incidence of autism? what was the error rate?
2) Can the brain scan be used to predict autism, rather than as a 20/20 hindsight study?
3) If the test does reliably predict autism, how practical is it to put it into use? I can't imagine it would make much sense to do it to every 6-month-old--the cost would be prohibitive, particularly since it's a relatively small percentage of the population which are autistic. Would this become something that is only used for children who have a high risk of developing autism?

/parent of an autistic son

It's also worth pointing out that the House of Representatives has passed a budget. It's the Democrat-controlled senate that hasn't taken up a budget for about three years now. Proposing a budget in today's political climate is just an invitation for your opponents to demagogue you in the media. Easier to threaten to shut down the government and then pass a Continuing Resolution rather than the constitutionally-demanded full budget.

Considering that Obama has only been president for slightly more than three years (and president-elect for only 4 months more), I find it hard to believe that Mitch McConnell has been stating that objective for 4-6 years. Besides, if you look beyond that statement to the reasoning behind it, you might find that there's some logical rationale behind it.

Personally, I'm wondering why we should be increasing research spending at all. Unfortunately, our political environment has become such that a spending freeze is often mischaracterized as "you're cutting off funding for X" when in fact such a proposal is status quo.

I found myself in exactly the same position about a year ago. Here's the thought process I went through:

1) If it's a marketable idea, one that could make bucketloads of money, the employer is going to pursue it. They'll even want you to spend work hours on it. Or they'll apply other company resources ($$$) to it.
2) If it's something you think is super cool, but isn't marketable, the employer isn't going to care about whether you do it on your own free time.
3) If it's an idea you think is awesome, your employer doesn't agree, and you turn out to be right (it becomes successful), this is the only place where there's a rub. One option (if it's some sort of internet site) is to run it through a proxy (person)--get a friend/neighbor to set up the service but give you all the necessary access to develop/administer it. Another is to fully develop the idea, but hold off on implementing until you're out of the employ of your current employer. A third option is to talk to legal and/or your boss and see if you can carve out an exemption from your contract for work not related to your employer's business.

For my current employer (who has a policy quite similar to yours), they were very open about the reason for such a policy. Simply put, they're hiring you for your mind, and if you've got a great idea, like it or not you'll be thinking about it during work hours. If you feel your current employer isn't compensating you sufficiently for all of the products of your mind, then you probably need to either A) talk to your employer about it, B) find a new job, or C) reassess how valuable your work really is. No offense is intended, but since you haven't mentioned how well you're paid, or even what industry you're working in, I have to leave it as a possibility.

You'd think that the lab-tested crashes would be the ones the NHTSA would be most concerned about occurring in the real world. Isn't the whole point of crash tests to determine that the car is safe in at least the most common types of crash? And if a vehicle fails (or catches on fire, or whatever) in that type of crash test, shouldn't that disqualify the car from being driven on US roads?

The consequences with a firearm are much more severe, and often involve death.

You're off a bit there--it should have read "The consequences with a firearm can be much more severe, and in rare cases involve death." The statistics for injuries and deaths from accidental discharge of firearms are alarmingly small. The number of crimes stopped, prevented, or deterred is astonishingly high. Sure, a gun has much greater potential to kill someone than a fire extinguisher. That's kind of the point. You use a fire extinguisher to take care of a fire. You use a gun to take care of the guy who just forcibly entered your apartment and intends on robbing/beating/raping you.