You are over estimating the class sizes in question. Graduating classes of 5 to 20 is more likely the case in many of these SD schools. I went to college at NDSU in Fargo, ND. One of my friends had a graduating class of 8.

I live in a school district in MN that went to 4 fays school weeks last year. The district actually lost money. Enough parents transferred their kids to a different school districts that it ate through any cost saving realized. Wow, no-one saw that one coming (morons) There were some students whose parents transferred their children into the district because the four day school week was a benefit. But not enough to make up the losses. They also send additional buses out at noon to pickup/drop off kindergarteners who now have half day kindergarten instead of full day. So they are actually using the buses more now than they used to.

The teachers love the new schedule. Only one hour a day was added to school days, but they got their Fridays off. And they get this for 5 years due to the contracts signed with the teachers union. When they announced the change, my initial thought was why do they only need to add four hours. Out of a 8 hour day you are only educating my kids for four hours?

the problem with my local district is that the admin to teach ratio is way too high and the admins get paid about 15% above state average and the teachers about 5% below. Once the first local levy was voted down after building a new school (levy to build a new school passed in 2005, the next year they asked to pass a levy because they didn't have the funds to operate it. WTF) the superintendent and school board just seemed to want to stick it to the parents. Their attitude seemed to be; you stuck it to us, now we are going to stick it to you.

Please, Dayton could pay more if he wanted to, nobody is stopping him. The state of Minnesota will cash his check and put it into the general fund. His people even said he would pay the minimum required by the state. And he keeps as much money out of the state as he can. Multiple trusts in more tax favorable locations (South Dakota, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands). He could pay state income tax on that too, but nope, the other "wealthy" should pay more. As if $120k/year is wealthy. Your comfortable, but not wealthy.

It's people like Dayton, Buffet, Gate; that like to spew on about the rich paying their fair share. Well pay up, nobody is stopping you. Oh wait, they wouldn't even put a dent in the deficit. Oh that's right, we don't have an income problem, we have a spending problem in this country. Everyone wants their handout. In Minnesota, there isn't a budget deficit, Dayton wants to raise the budget almost 20% over the next biennium. There's NO DEFICIT. we have a spending problem. Keep giving more to the schools, even though performance has gone down (which I don't blame on the teachers, I think it has more to do with lack of parenting). DOD spending out of control (we're not the world police, stop acting like it). Medicare and Medicade, now Obamacare (lets not address the cost problem, lets blame the insurance companies and then guarantee them more customers). Social Security funds raided with soon to be worthless IOUs and nobody can accept the fact that the politicians fucked that one up and it needs to be addressed. So lets raise taxes on the wealthy, 39% for the feds and 13.95% for the state (yep Dayton wants 13.95%) for a grand total of almost 53%. Yeah, the wealthy should give up over half of their income so fed, state, and local can keep spending like mad. Great solution, lets not solve the actual problem, government can't stop spending.

And should public unions have collective bargaining rights? Hell, no. There shouldn't even be public employee unions. the unions are bargaining with people who could give two shits less about the costs. They want to keep the votes, so give the unions what they want and try to play it down as much as possible. We can just raise taxes, and if people complain tell them they can't "cut", it's for the children.

And as dumb as Rep. Duffy's comments were, I can see where he is coming from. He just got sworn in two months ago. He hasn't exactly bringing in the big coin too long now. He has bills, student loans, car payment, house payment, probably rent in DC now. In a year of two he'll probably be doing fine, but right now, money is still tight. Heck he is probably sending his kids to a private school now that he had to move them to DC if he wants to every see them. Dumb comment, yep, one of the dumbest, but cut the guy some slack.

It is called the Federal INCOME tax for a reason. Not a federal asset tax.

In 2006, the top 20% of income earners had 61.4% of income, sorry the page you referenced didn't supply a break down for the top 10% of income earners.

I agree, corporations and the super rich have many more options to hide wealth than a majority of people, and that needs to change. But it annoys the HELL out of me when people like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates complain that they don't pay enough taxes. Here's a solution, tell you accountant to quit taking all the extra F'ing deductions, stop hiding income, and pay more taxes. What that tells me is that they want to screw everyone else, but be leave me alone. Frickin' hypocrites.

I'll tell you what I'd do, man: two chicks at the same time, man.

That's it? If you had a billion dollars, you'd do two chicks at the same time?

Damn straight. I always wanted to do that, man. And I think if I were a billionaire I could hook that up, too; 'cause chicks dig dudes with money.

That's not what your wife told me. Sorry couldn't resist, but neither could she.

Sorry, I had a different train of thought when writing the title. Should now read "what is the end goal, reuse old equipment or low power server".

If the point is to re-use the old P4, then get a low power PCI video card. If the point is to have a low power server to play with, get something like this: http://www.mwave.com/mwave/skusearch_v3.asp?scriteria=BA25456. Can be found else were, not giving props to MWave. Or if a dual core system is wanted, get this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856167037.

Just need to add memory (SO-DIMM DDR2) and a HD. I went with the first as the single core Atom uses about 3.5 watts less than the dual core. I also went with two WD "green" HDs. It should pull about 50 watts when up and running.

Please, stockholders don't sue. Individual stockholders don't hold enough shares to make it worth their while to sue. And institutional stockholders don't care, they are not in it for profits to go up, they want reasons to make large numbers of trades to earn additional commissions.

Look at what Meryl Lynch did. Give out $4B in bonuses, and had the balls to move the date of the payout up to get it done before the BoA acquisition. They lost $15B that quarter, and still paid out the bonuses. If stockholders have a reason to sue, that would be one.

Shareholders don't sue.