The general definition of "rural" precludes all towns, regardless of size. It is specifically the areas that are not within the confines of towns or cities.

I believe in this case they meant "uniformed combatants" to be the only people who can claim protections under the Geneva Convention.

I didn't say they fell under the Geneva Convention, I said they do not have the same rights parity with POWs.

While I was speaking of personal anecdotes, there are also public examples that are less extreme than my personal experiences, but that still show the mindset. There are many cases of Christians in government positions who allow the use of public property to display permanent Christian themes but deny the same to other religions. Such instances are pretty easy to find on Google.

While there was negligence on both parts, I definitely agree that the contractor should be penalized for failure to perform the promised service.

POWs have far more rights than the prisoners in Guantanamo, at least for those countries that actually act in accordance to the Geneva Convention. The US is no longer one of those countries.

Funny, I've never lived in a rural area that had apartments available for rent.

And what would you propose that the country do about all the resources produced in rural areas when the infrastructure to produce them domestically does not exist, as would be the case in your example? While many (perhaps most) subsidies are abusive, the creation of a national road system, electrical grid, and telecommunications grid have made certain things possible that otherwise would not have been.

Those damn urbanites should be self-reliant with their food, electricity generation, and production of raw materials in that case. The rural areas of the country shouldn't have to subsidize urbanites with non-monetary services. </sarcasm>

That's not true. Unprepared food is taxed in Idaho. I'm not aware of other states doing so, but I know that one for sure.

In addition, at least in the Washington example the poor pay no sales tax on food, which makes up a great deal of most poor families' monthly budgets.

many poor people pay for telecommunications services out of their own pockets.

That's becoming increasingly untrue. Anyone on food stamps now qualifies for subsidized or free telephone services under Federal programs.

Non-democracies are usually associated with internal atrocities, while democracies are usually associated with external atrocities. This is true of Rome, Germany, and the USA, Great Britain, and France, to name a few.

That would require forwarded ports on the gateway being used by the thief. It's not like consumer machines are ever connected directly to a public IP in almost all cases. That's limited to a direct connection to a cable modem or use of dial-up, or other even more rare use cases.

Who do you think most thieves are?