Only if you assume all government spending can be lumped into one and that government spending magically means "more money" into an economy and thus more prosperity. An easy example is military spending. Sure, that 800 billion dollars employs some people, but if that money was never taken out of the hands of individuals, it would be spent on either consumption or investment. Those are actual wealth - a blown up bridge in the middle east is not.

On many issues, it can be just as easy to buy a vote. If current polls show a split of 45%-55% for an issue, those who want to buy the election just have to change the opinions of 6%. An ad campaign of some sort can do that. Remember that they only aim to change the "swing" votes - they don't need to worry about the opinions of those that are strongly one way or the other. Maybe it is more expensive in some cases, but still very plausible.

I am still fairly skeptical about climate change. Make no mistake, though - moderate skeptics like myself are NOT the ones arguing against the teaching of climate change in schools at the national, non-internet-commentator level. Oil companies (and related industries) have a LOT to lose if the next generation sees climate change as a real thing. Moves like this are not based on science as much as they are on the cash flow that follows peoples' opinions.

I'm legitimately curious, are there people out there that are so awfully busy that they need a browser to check the news and Facebook for them? Did it suddenly become old-fashioned to actually type "cnn.com" in the address bar? I'm all for social networking and most everything that's happened in this field for the past few years. But at what point is it taken too far?

Don't blow this out of proportion now. There's a great difference between the government verbally lashing out against those that leak their documents and the government brainwashing those who have less-than-perfect facial expressions. Go live in North Korea for a year. Then we'll talk.

He's got the same attitude as the Windows guys. He doesn't get that the browser / OS has a main goal of getting out of the way and letting you work.

Sometimes this can be bad for consumers - small companies have to be far more competitive (good for consumers) than large companies. It can also be good for them, if the "gobbling" up refers to a new technology, as a large company can go a long way to promoting something new. (WebM? We'll see.)

...at least with Chrome. It's more popular than Safari. It's more secure than IE, meaning it's surely secure enough. Their announcement is titled "UPGRADE YOUR BROWSER BY JULY 18". Their IT dept. is assuming a person only using their browser for online banking.