Your figure doesn't include the energy, time and other resources spent to collect, transport and hand sort the used glass.

Consider this... if used glass cost less resources than producing new glass, wouldn't someone pay people for their used glass? When's the last time you had an offer to buy your used glass that didn't involve the government charging you per bottle ahead of time and then using the money to help pay for processing it on the back-end?

If you really want to recycle something that make sense, buy a used house, or a used car, or go to a pawn shop. You'll notice that the people who sell that stuff all pay for what they're recycling to you, because it's clearly less cost to buy used ones than to make a new one. Plenty of reuse, there.

Why do you think NY city canceled their recycling program? It was costing them twice as much to recycle stuff than to throw it away. To the tune of $57 million/year. That's a lot of wasted resources being used. Doesn't sound like the stuff they were recycling was in huge demand from manufacturers because they'd save by using it in place of raw materials, does it?

But don't let basic economics intrude on feeling good about saving sand from extinction by driving trucks all over to collect worthless used glass from people's homes and then paying people to sort it into different colors. :)

Or you could just buy glass containers and throw them away afterwards.

It's not like we're going to be running out of sand any time soon, is it? And biodegrading glass isn't exactly an environmental pollutant.

Recycling consumer glass bottles takes way more total resources than just throwing them away and making new glass bottles from sand.

Or is this about something other than logic and the actual physical environment? If so, carry on...

You can get keyboards for $2+shipping on Amazon. $15 seems high to me.

Something like a $35 laptop would work for this guy.

Corporations exist to serve their founder's and shareholder's purposes. Those purposes is what "corporate speech" is for. You seem to have a blind spot where you think corporations magically appear and are then controlled by their employees for some sinister motive.

The opinions expressed by corporate speech, in the myriad examples I've given over and over again, completely unrefuted by you and exactly on point to the USSC case in question, are exercising the free speech rights of the people who created the corporation for the purpose of expressing those ideas.

You still haven't made any sort of argument at all against my main point, that the constitution says that congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech and of the press. Not even that of people who form and own corporations. Not even if those people use the corporate form to publish things. Certainly not if the only reason for the laws abridging their freedom is to protect incumbent politicians.

Until you address that, all you're left with is continuing to argue that you personally think that it's ok to deny the rights of people who form corporations on a proposed technicality that the USSC has ruled is incorrect. Not much ground to stand on there.

Clearly, what you're saying is at least partially false. Reporters and editors who work at the NY Times corporation express their own opinions all the time. The people who worked for Citizens United obviously were expressing their own opinions in the movie they made.

Still, that's not the point at all. People who work for a corporation are employed to do their job. Sometimes that job involves expressing their opinions and sometimes that job requires NOT expressing their opinions.

I've been pretty clear and consistent that what I'm talking about are the people who organize and own the corporation. For example, we don't talk about the guy who is hired to paste up a billboard as being the one exercising his first amendment rights, we talk about the people who paid for the billboard to be printed and put up. It's not the guy who runs the printing press whose rights are infringed when the owner of a paper is told he isn't allowed to print what he wants about a candidate. It's not the broadcast engineer whose rights are infringed when a company created for the express purpose of producing a political movie is told they'll be fined if they broadcast it within 30 days of an election. It's not their purposes which are being frustrated, it's obviously the purpose of the owners being frustrated.

A corporation is a tool for the owners to accomplish a particular purpose. Free speech may be incidental to that purpose, but it also may be directly related to that purpose. I'm sorry that you limit people's speech and publishing such that you prefer to ban their use of a corporation to exercise it, but to me that's just thugs in government trying to use their power to shut people up they either disagree with or they don't control, or both.

"Campaign finance" laws are generally about one thing, doing what Congress thinks will help keep them in office and give them more control and an advantage in elections. That's not necessarily why regular people push them, but that's why Congress and President's pass them.

Some people react to free speech they don't approve of by looking for some excuse for the government to stop it using some technicality they think might pass muster in the USSC. Well, in this particular case the USSC finally did the right thing and protected people's rights to publish their political ideas using a corporation.

Just because people create a separate legal entity for the purpose of exercising their rights doesn't mean "Hey, we gotcha, we found a way to protect politicians from your speech!" is going to fly. It's a B.S. argument designed to use an excuse to limit people's speech. Well, guess what, the first amendment says "Congress shall make no law respecting ..." and there's no exception in there for corporations or for people working through a corporation, or for FCC broadcast licensees. It just says "... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press". Saying you can't broadcast a political movie within 30 days of an election because it's political and might influence the election... that's EXACTLY what the first amendment is supposed to protect against. As it turns out, five Justices of the USSC agree with that.

I've never said that corporations are people. As stated by the USSC decision, they're (among other things) associations of citizens.

Corporations are no more people than a hammer is a person. Corporations are organizational tools created (yes, under governing laws) by people for various purposes.

In the Citizens United case, as in the NY Times, ACLU, etc... the corporation is formed for the purpose of publishing speech. It's not a "whim".

When a nail is driven by a hammer, it's not the hammer doing it. It's the person using the hammer. The hammer is just a tool for focusing force at the point of impact.

What you're saying is similar in logic to "We can ban hammers from being used to hit nails without abridging the right of people to hit nails." That's ridiculous. It's people that use hammers to hit nails and it's people that use corporations to, among other things, speak and publish freely. Prohibiting those people from using corporations to organize those actions abridges those people's speech.

Abridging the people's right to use a tool for free speech is restricting their right to free speech. If there is a compelling state interest with no other solution, like say, preventing people from blowing out your eardrums with a bullhorn, then the government can legally restrict the tool being used the minimal amount to prevent that. If there isn't, like, someone's speech is simply more effective, then the USSC won't let the government restrict it.

The real argument here is that some people want to restrict speech that uses a corporation because they see that as an effective way to spread ideas they disagree with. Preventing effectiveness of speech isn't a legitimate state interest, even if the people who happen to control the government at the time don't agree with that speech.

I think people should stop trying to ban speech and stop trying to ban support from other people for political ideas and politicians and instead compete in the marketplace for ideas by spreading their own ideas. The answer to speech you disagree with is more speech of your own, not banning other people's speech under the excuse they're using a corporation to organize it.

Citizens United was about the government telling a political media corporation that they weren't allowed to air a movie about a politician within 30 days of an election. During the oral argument, the government said they could use the law to ban books if the book mentioned a politician.

It may be a "tired" argument to you that "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.", but that doesn't make it an incorrect argument. The First Amendment was written in "terms of speech, not speakers", to continue quoting the actual USSC decision.

You seem to have a common misunderstanding. The "press" refers to using technology for speech, it's not referring to an occupation or a specific industry. Everyone has freedom of speech and of the press. It's not something that refers to journalists by trade. That's a modern misunderstanding because of how language has changed to call journalists "the press". See this reprinted law review article.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
It seems pretty obvious that a law prohibiting people, no matter how they're organized, from showing a political movie within 30 days of an election _abridges_ their freedom.

So if you and I form a corporation to publish a newspaper, we both supply the money and get stock shares, but we decide you'll be the newspaper editor and I'll run the printing presses, or whatever, then it's legal for the government to censor that newspaper, because it's not censoring our individual speech?

You don't see how ridiculous that sounds? The government is preventing the owner's free speech if it censors the owner's corporation. The corporation is simply a legal entity for a group of individual people to work together toward a common cause.

That cause may be publishing a newspaper (NY Times), or arguing for civil rights (ACLU), or publishing a movie about a politician (Citizens United), or for selling chocolate (Nestle), but the fact that people have organized themselves in a particular way for financial and effectiveness reasons doesn't mean they suddenly forfeit their right to free speech.

You'd think that a Harvard educated adjunct professor would get credit for what he said, rather than for wishful thinking on the part of his supporters.

Exact quote from a transcript:
"If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen."

"that" obviously refers to "a business", not something from the previous sentence.

Besides, who do you think created the wealth and paid the taxes for the "roads and bridges" you claim he was referring to? Let me give you a hint, it wasn't a government bureaucrat nor a politician.

Normally I try not to feed the trolls, but I couldn't let this complete and utter bullshit pass.

Let's start with just the first sentence. The two term mayor of Salt Lake City is a long-time Democrat who's official about page has quotes like "He also championed the state’s first municipal protections in the areas of employment and housing for the City’s LGBT community." and "His progressive agenda for Utah’s Capital City centers on increasing livability through initiatives that give choices back to residents including transportation alternatives, green initiatives, equal treatment for all and much, much more."

Sounds like SLC is totally controlled by your supposed Mormon theocracy, doesn't it?

The rest of your statement is just as much bullshit. Yeah, since half the state is Mormon, of course people who are Mormon can vote and have an influence on who gets elected where. The Mormon church itself, nor its prominent leaders, don't choose nor endorse any candidates. They don't decide who gets elected and they don't tell them what to do once in office. At best, they sometimes get a sympathetic ear in zoning committees because everyone knows who they are.

Does the government in Utah tend to reflect the values of Utah's voters? Of course it does, just like it does everywhere else in the U.S. Does the Mormon church itself "control" anything like you've described? Absolutely and totally not.

I appreciate your serious consideration.

Improved convenience leads to greater efficiency. Greater efficiency, for a Doctor oriented application, leads to either more time a Doctor can spend working on patients instead of paperwork, or lower cost, leading to more health care consumption, etc... For a patient oriented application, leads to patients doing more with their health care, or able to more reliably record medical measurements, or becoming better informed about their health, or whatever.

Sure, it may not be the "push a magic button and someone's life is instantly saved" application, but improved convenience and medical efficiency does lead to lives being saved, a little bit at a time.

Think of convenient hand sanitizers at the entrance to each hospital room. Sure, it's easy enough for a medical professional to wash their hands in a sink elsewhere instead, but the convenience means they'll do it more often and as a result, save lives. Don't underrate a little convenience and efficiency. Once you add up the hundreds of conveniences, they have a big impact on medical care. Also, if you make it easy to bring something to market, you'll have a larger supply and be more likely to end up with something that is a breakthrough.

Making improvements in marginal efficiencies is a realistic way to make a huge difference. Don't let the process be choked by a regulatory burden that keeps it from getting off the ground. Bureaucrats don't have all the information contained in the minds of all the people who might write a simple app that solves a simple problem as long as it's not too difficult to accomplish.

But we're talking about safety! What happens when the delays and costs of regulating medical applications causes hundreds of people to die because they didn't get better medical help?

Have you considered that this is the same FDA that causes the death of thousands of people every year because they haven't approved drugs used safely for years elsewhere?

Have you ever been involved with government-approved software before? Mostly it never gets completed because the process kills it.

Here are some examples, from a quick Google search and result: "In the essentially unregulated Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania, two companies have competed successfully with each other for years. Edward Downing, business administrator of Bethlehem, Pa., asserts that the by-products of the region's laissez-faire attitude toward cable include price discounts, superior service, and freedom of choice.[16] The recent introduction of a second cable company in Presque Isle, Me.--a city of only 2,000 residents--induced the sluggish incumbent franchisee to dramatically update its technology and increase service options.[17] In Slidell, La., the city administrator, Reinhart Dearing, explains that the "spirit of free enterprise" that prompted the city to deregulate buses and taxicabs has also led to a thriving competition between two cable companies.[18]"

If cable is a "natural monopoly", then why do cities need laws preventing others from competing? You can't have it both ways. Either it's a "natural monopoly" or it's a government monopoly. Guess which one the government laws saying only one company can do something implies? I'll give you a hint, it's not "natural".

Having done this before for a school a few years ago... this anon comment above is the best way to go. All of the above is cheap to free.

Only thing I would add is to check with your state educational network admins, assuming you're using a state internet connection. They may also have a service available built into their WAN you can use.

I'm actually more interested in what Obama did in College, than high school, but that's still mostly irrelevant.

abolish Medicare and Social Security

It's Obamacare that specified 700B of cuts to Medicare in the baseline budget. Ryan's budgets keep Social Security the same for anyone currently over 55 and rather then let Social Security go bankrupt in the near future, modify it so that it's are able to last for much longer.
Of course, having passed more of his budgets through Congress than Obama has (who can't even get Congressional Democrats to vote for his ideas in bill form), Ryan has had to be the adult in the room and actually consider the effects of things on the deficit and future entitlements.

This VP pick shows that Romney is more interested in governing well and taking on serious issues than he is interested in short-term political gain from a couple of poll points in a swing state or two. Ryan was by far the best serious candidate for the VP job.