I don't live in California, but I would have liked to see Meg Whitman win. The biggest problem facing most of these states is that they are just wandering aimlessly, guided by special interest and political tug of wars rather than a sensible leadership. If more people were brought in to run it as a business the waste would be reduced dramatically. Right now the social systems are a huge problem, and a lot of the issue is tied to the measurement of success. Right now their "success" is measured purely by how much money they spend. The logic being the more they spend, the more people helped. Unfortunately that is almost entirely incorrect. There need to be actual hard numbers involved such as the number of people receiving assistance, the number of people who leave the system and their duration, the number of people chronically on the system, the number of people abusing the system, the total cost of each person using the system vs result of rehabilitation.

How does this start at the top? This budget cut is only affecting the lowest level employees and with probably only amount to less than 0.03% of the deficit they are facing. The reality is also that in removing the cell phones NEW and potentially HIGHER costs maybe incurred. Did anyone stop to ask WHY the phones were there? Did they make sure all these officials had landlines still? The average cellphone for an individual is $70 give or take. For the government it would be a fraction of that on a big contract, so maybe $45-$50 assuming high. Now, a central phone system for an agency is general upwards of $100,000 or more, plus maintenance, service, and routine upgrades. Chances are very good that it was actually CHEAPER to have cell phones for the staff routed to from a smaller communications system than it is to go back to full landline use.

I don't even live in California and think this is idiotic without review. This is a knee jerk reaction that will most likely cost more in the end than it saved.

The reality is that "herd immunity" is a misnomer in the hands of idiots. First of all, the term defines that the majority will remain healthy through EXPOSURE and general resistances acquired by the group. It doesn't mean that the offspring of said group will not contract the virus/infection, it simply means the ones who do not die from it will have a greater resistance to it. Now, that entire system is based around survival of the strongest, so in order to work your weak children must be allowed to die. That way they will not reproduce and thereby reduce the herds total resistance. Unfortunately, the chances are vary good that if your child was one of the oddities that would have suffered ill effects due to vaccination, they probably won't make it through the first round of infection either... purely based on the observation that they have inferior biological adaptation qualities. Even beyond the reintroduction of survival of the fittest to the human race, sanitation methods need to be kept in check, as stigmatization will reduce exposure, thereby reducing immune responses.

I don't know, but I prefer the option where we simply do that exact same thing through controlled methods of vaccines, under the care of a physician, and avoid all the unseemly child deaths. I guess if the 0.01% that there is an unknown variable that could cause autism is enough for you to ignore the 1,700% more likely death due to measles.

Save some time and just give it to Michael Bay, that way annoying details like plot and character development can be glossed over and replaced with explosions.

It isn't even the privately owned part that concerns me the most, it's the consolidation of power. Many of the most corrupt organizations and corporations on earth are government entities, so government control wouldn't alleviate the issue either. Corruption happens as soon as person is involved and has the ability/power to abuse their position. The only way to minimize it's damage is to diversify authority, a single point of authentication is a single point of failure and abuse.

It is only a problem because of the incredibly complicated tax codes we have implemented. If the tax was a simple, flat tax rate with no dedications or special escape clauses applied to every person living in the country, it wouldn't be a problem. Of course, you can't feel too shafted unless you are quite wealthy. The upper 10% of income earners pay approximately 70% of all taxes in the country. My guess is you are still not in that 10%.

What we really need to do is stop playing the "well they can afford it" class warfare game and make the tax brackets a fixed percentage for everyone equally. Then it would really be fair and hard to escape with loopholes. You might also want to consider that while a corporation like Google only pays 2.4% tax rate, they are also paying taxes indirectly through the employees and salaries. This only accounts for income taxation and does not account for other dedications they might be utilizing.

That's a UI failure. If the user wants to enter month/day, let them enter it and logic it in behind the scenes. I have users ask for things like this all the time... so I give it to them. It's not something that's going to be a big deal, and it makes their lives easier entering it. Either that or mask it properly with a defaulted year.

You are telling me that no other channel has "shock jock" opinion shows? What the hell have I been watching on the other channels all this time then? When a segment is labeled "news" I will assume it has a some random facts sprinkled with opinion. When a segment is labeled opinion, I assume it is an entertainment section utilizing facts. The two are very different and do no automatically void any channel they maybe on. Last time I checked, Fox was dominating all other stations because of their opinion shows, and MSNBC was dominating CNN for the same reason. People want to be entertained.... staying current on the petty happenings of the world are just a side effect. The real issue has nothing to do with the shows as much as it is becoming personal to people that disagree with the politics. If you are explicitly Democrat or Republican, you are already too bias to have a valid opinion on entertainment like this.

I think by definition they can't be conservative while funding a program like this. It is like the "conservatives" in the US that claim the position of conservative while spending money like it's going out of fashion.... and a program like this actually would qualify as socialist as it is being done under the guise of social assistance. A social program doesn't have to make sense to still be a social program, just look at the welfare system.

That would make for a great conspiricy theory, but the my guess is that Julian Assange is probably just an ego maniac douche bag, who sucks to work with. Reality is usually far less interesting than fiction, and I can almost guarantee most people working at wikileaks were doing so because of moral reasons, which conflict with Assange's money making goals.

It doesn't matter if they were hunters, hippies, or investment bankers. It seems that we have simply let the idiot to normal ratio get far to imbalanced in society. We need to repeal seatbelt laws, take the warnings off plastic bags, and let Darwin lean out the population a bit.

Actually, coal plants are a symptom of the need for affordable power systems. We can completely sustain our existence without them, we just need a few billion people to kill themselves first, to relocate populations closer to green power systems, and remove the freewill of the populace to do anything not in the best interest of our agenda. Those who do not comply will need to be dealt with swiftly, I suggest we form an order of Grammaton Clerics to maintain the obedience of the masses. I would also request we do not allow Christian Bale exist in our perfect world, something tells me he might be a problem.

* Note this is satire. I am not actually a new age environmental fanatic, so you FBI agents can put down your pencils and save your self the trip to my house.

Wait? Someone likes java?

If you consider North America and South America one continent, your opinion is automatically invalid.

A lot longer than the code will be relevant.