Instead of money, the government could require you to attend a class, preform public service, or some avenue other than money. Is it an attempt to curb your self destructive habits? Yes. Is it because some busy body wants you to be healthy? No, because when you get sick and don't have money, human beings with morals insist the community get you treatment, not ignore you while you croak in the gutter. Besides, the moaning interrupts my yoga meditation. Is it a money grab? Yes. One action frequently has many objectives. Thinking otherwise is a simplistic. Fixing a leaking water pipe is about more than the cost of the wasted water, it's also about preventing inconvenience of a muddy swamp and damage to my home.

Pretty much, yes. And pretty much the same answer as above. Don't mess with my medication time while you're moaning in the gutter. :)

This is Slashdot. You can say "regulation" here you insensitive clod!

Therac-25. Ford Pinto. Melamine in baby formula. Railroad appliance act of 1893. All cases of regulation being brought about because the "free market" placed profit over lives. Industry did the math and found it cost them less to kill people, pay off the families than to address the reason why those people were dying. The objective of a free market is to serve to maximize profit for the shareholders/owners, not have regard for others. To that end, monopolies work better, like the meat packing industry in the USA, or poultry, or pork. A very limited set of operators for 90% of those markets and all closely price within hours of each other within a few cents.

What was that about "Free Markets" again? I'm going to guess that while we both support the concept of a free markets, only one of us has actually read more than 5 books about it or thought deeply about the consequences of not limiting it, and why. A great example of over regulation is the maritime industry. George H W Bush of "Read my lips, no new taxes!" passed a 10% tax on luxury yachts. No regulatory objective, just a money grab. The luxury yacht industry left the USA and the tax cost the government more to enforce than it brought in.

"Why did they" in business is almost always going to have at the root "Because Money."

First, background: CDDB was originally founded as opensource, but eventually that changed. People thought that the data they voluntarily entered would always be free - Wiki
I don't have the time to sort it but I would assume that a perusal of GraceNote's product offering would show some insights. I don't know, like I say, I am out of time.

I don't mind the 20% added charge to deliver. I mind the charge to deliver AND the 25% "tip for the driver" to deliver it, which includes the delivery charge.

Sort of like charging sales tax on top of the $5 a pack cigarette tax stamp. A double dip - not that I smoke. Charging a tax on top of a tax. Same with charing me a fee to send me a bill telling me how much I need to pay you, but now it's another $10 because you sent me an email telling me what my water bill is. Or worse, garbage bill that doesn't change every month. I already know how much to pay, It's on automatic. Same with the cell phone bill. I don't need you to tell me until it changes and then you can send an email and not charge for that.

And doesn't take an hour and a half to come.

I tried to start a business with "extra toppings" in the freezer section (cheese, mushrooms, sausage, etc) but couldn't get the chain stores to stock it. They wanted at least 6 months of product for no charge first, no limit on quantity. I can't afford that. Pretty sure it was a "go away" tactic because they started selling a store brand line of "plus toppings". Or maybe they already saw the need and filled it and I was just a coincidence.

They don't care if it's working, that wasn't my point. They don't care if it works or not, they don't want to be bothered by it not working. As general rule, the republicans have quietly sabotaged things for decades, then loudly say "It doesn't work!, we have to kill it off!" then bother the airwaves with it until Hell won't have it about how We Must Do Something About It.

Example:
Massive day care fraud!? We must cut off all funds! (Never mind the fraud was already discovered and stopped 5 years ago.) That sort of thing. If they simply cut off daycare, those generally uncaring folks would say "Hey, that may not be something *I* use but it's good stuff!" whereas now they say "Well, at least they stopped those damned [racial characterization deleted] from stealing!" Same thing with "They're eating the Dogs! They are eating the CATS!" - turns out one woman, and she wasn't a PoC and was howl at the moon crazy to boot.

It is in the interest of the parties to make the situation a case of "A curse on both your houses" so that their respective dedicated bases don't have to outvote the majority of people that feel "let me get on with my life and don't bother me" that just want the government to work and not have to expend time, effort and thought about it. If you recall the Monty Python skit "Argument Clinic", this is about the state of was passes for news. (It's on YT if you'd like to review.) I will say that "news" has never, in any time in history, ever been simply "pure reporting".

Thanks, that's a point I wasn't aware of. That will likely result in the election being put off as long as possible rather than hurried up if the rules allow for that.

By straight math, 3, but it's really likely done now.
There are 3 congress critters already out, one only temporary, two require an election and thus will be 60 - 90 days out.
TL;DR:

Doug LaMalfa, (R) California, died Sunday. The US Constitution requires that house seats be filled by special election and Doug LaMalfa's seat was gerrymandered to the Democratic Party in response to Texas' gerrymandering out 5 Democratic party seats.

Jim Baird (R) Indiana is out after a horrific crash, but "should" return. (And I wish him well in his recovery, though I disagree with 75% of his policy, he's a farmer that farms for profit, not for subsidy and mostly "gets it" on that sector). Likely could make it in to vote in two weeks if absolutely critical.

MTG resigned effective Monday (Jan 5th 2026), likely a GOP'er will replace her. and Tuesday someone elected a Democratic party member in their special election, defeating the GOP where not expected but can't recall which state.

Along with the loose cannons on the GOP House side, that means only one congressman needs to flip until the vacancy from MTG or LaMalfa are filled.
Chip Roy will flip as long as it's nothing important. Thomas Massie of Tennessee is another lose cannon but he's willing to go to the mat where Chip Roy won't.

The challenge is always in the Senate, where currently 13(? maybe it's 14) GOP senators need to vote to convict and remove and I don't see even just 4 GOP senators doing that.

That's a useful question. I will think on that, because I think at first blush that misinformation is misinformation, and the construction of a lie is of less import than it's effect. As one of my stock jokes, I say "We don't need to worry about AI, because it's attention span is only as long as it's power cord." but I read a disturbing piece about Anthropic's Caude. Haven't had time to read it completely as yet. My other stock thought is that lies you know are lies are useful insights into the motivation of others.

I want to point out that for the most part, there are no more newspapers, they are opinion papers. A bare, usually not well investigated set of facts (mostly a press release, unverified) followed by an entire banquet of opinion laid out on a smorgasbord of right wing memes or left wing wishful thinking, leaving "analysis" down to the basic divide of who is on first, what is on second, and I don't know is third base, leaving us to the unenviable occupant of short stop.

While most of the USA's opinion is formed before the frist facts are actually articulated, those that prefer not to consume mass produced, synthetic pablum are quite willing for form an opinion based on the very thing least available: Fact, with independently verified sources. Knowledge is power, and we certainly can't have a populace empowered by it. Fates forefend and heavens to Betsy!

Except those that air gap, which, admitted, if you're that worried about security, you already don't use Windows.

Unnecessary. Microsoft themselves are the best argument for leaving Windows, followed by their technology.

Where the driver in the change of OS comes from will be when Microsoft starts charging per inhale and per exhale per seat per day on the user side. When the question is "Why does/doesn't business do ...." the answer is always, always the same. MONEY. Microsoft is driving the use of their OS to be only if it can "phone home" and thus Microsoft can exact their pound of bits.

Trump is being manipulated by someone. This isn't the right kind of crazy for trump.

When most people cannot rase a family on one income, afford housing, food, clothing, and health care.

Because with wealth redistribution from those that make the wealth happen to those that operate it makes commodities such as food, housing and clothing unaffordable.

the top 10% hold around ~70% of the wealth of the entire USA.
13.5 percent of the population go hungry every day, and 55% cannot afford unprocessed food for every day consumption.
Income inequality is rampant. One CEO "earns" 6,731:1 in pay. That's not percent - that's A&F's CEO's pay - equivalent to the work of 6,731 employees. I cherry picked that because it's shocking. The average is around 900 to one.

Many people in the USA are food insecure. I buy fresh and canned meat for myself and to give out to those I know need it.
Being an epicure is fine; if you can afford it, then by all means you should enjoy your meals. In the mean time, there are many that buy cat food, and they don't have any pets. Even that is dropping off - have you seen that a case of cat food costs more than 8 rotisserie chickens?

* 10 million a day, not 100.

Warren Buffett is worth about 173 billion dollars, pegging him as the world's 4th or 5th richest person if memory serves.
He's 95 years old. If he spent 100 million dollars a day, he would need to live another 47 years to spend it all.

This is a fair example of end stage capitalism. Will 100 million dollars a day make him live another ~50 years?
(To be sure, Warren Buffett is quite well aware of the dependences of wealth and worries about it, but has not found a solution he's willing to communicate.)

I've been called a communist because I am against limited groups having wealth of this magnitude. (I do not consider myself a communist: It is an economic system whereby one greedy person can wreck the entire economy by just being greedy, which is base immoral human nature.) And while Warren Buffett did start with the advantage of a modicum of wealth from his upbringing, he didn't inherit gobs and gobs of money. He amassed the first part of his wealth by his own action, (Did the same thing I did - pinball machines) it was not at his own effort past about age 30.

I've read that the minimum wage was established in 1938 at twenty five cents per hour. At that time, Gold was $35.00 per troy ounce. 8 hours a day at twenty five cents per hour is $2, so about 17.5 days to make an ounce of gold.
Today, the minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, $58 dollars per day, gold spot price is $4,319.50, so to earn the price of an ounce would take about 74 and a half days.
I went to get the historical data from data.gov; as so many other data sets in this post DOGE world, it has been removed and now if you want data prior to 1984 you have to pay for it. The average wage in 1938 was ~$2,100 (or 60 troy ounces) The average wage in the USA today is somewhere around $68,000.00 in 2024 (or 16 ounces.)

The wealth of the nation comes not be the effort of your own hands and mind anymore. It comes from weaponizing capitalism. We Americans shout and cheer for unrestricted unfettered, unregulated, uncontrolled capitalism. There is a reason they call us "Wage slaves" and we are leaping into our own chains with wild abandon. There are no easy answers that all find palatable and comforting. Most are even against taxing the rich. This is the power of wealth. They get to program the people into that attitude and that unions are bad (which as with anything, they are not inherently good or bad, being run by people with good or ill intention.)

I don't have the answers either. I'm simply pointing out it's raining money and the rich are taking our share of it. Turns out communism isn't the only thing greed destroys; it destroys capitalism too.

_merlin's comment needs moderation up for the clarity and specific parameters noted in the post.