There is absolutely something inherently wrong with a free market: competition brings down not just prices, but wages as well.

Look at the number of jobs lost as the U.S. shifted manufacturing outside the country. Yes, we can get cheaper goods, but we also have flat wages for 40 years.

Our standard of living went down, while poorer countries such as China saw their standard of living increase.

I’m fairly certain that if Americans had been asked 20 years ago if they would mind lowering their standard of living so the Chinese could raise theirs, the answer would have been a resounding yes.

Free trade is a libertarian myth; it doesn’t exist, not anywhere. Whether it’s tariffs, or VAT taxes, or protectionist government regulation to create artificial pharmaceutical monopolies, enacting free-trade policies only hurts a nation, because all the other nations have their thumbs on the scale to protect their own interests.

And so should we.

This just isn’t true.

Cox charges more money for lower speeds than Time Warner, Verizon (Frontier), Comcast, AT&T, etc.

And they have the weakest channel/cable subscription offerings of of any of the monopolies. If there’s a new feature or technology being offered by the cable industry, you can bet that Cox customers will get it years after everyone else in the country has it.

In short, Cocks Communications is aptly named.

Wait, why do we need a UBI for everyone? Let’s take the bottom 30 million Americans and give them each $30,000 a year. That’s $900B isn’t it? If we just cut the DoD budget down from $1.3T to $400B, we’ve just paid for a UBI which will inject 900 billion into the economy. UBI recipients are going to spend every penny they get on food, rent, utilities, clothes, etc.

Maybe we make it progressive so the closer you get to a $30,000 AGI the less you get in UBI, and once you get to $30,000 AGI you get nothing.

That makes a hell of a lot more sense to me than giving that $900B to defense and security contractors, which is essentially corporate welfare.

The notion that we should give EVERY American $10,000 is absurd. I don’t need $10,000, and neither do my children. But I can certainly imagine 30 million Americans who could benefit from a UBI.

First, remove federal observers so any irregularities go unreported.

Second, make sure there is no paper trail.

Third, the fewer votes counted, the more likely Republicans will win. The more votes are counted, the more likely Democrats are to win. With the polls this close, it doesn’t take much cheating to ensure Trump wins The White House.

Remember, every Republican president after Ike has cheated to win, and this time will be no exception. Thanks, John Roberts! Clearly racism is gone in your white world, and we can just throw the Voting Rights Act on the trashheap of history.

It's pretty audacious for you to claim you didn't write "I think he's a good man, and even a good president under the circumstances..." when all anyone needs to do is scroll up to see that you actually wrote that.

I think President Obama is a dishonest, dishonorable man, not a good man. I think he's weak, ineffective, and a terrible negotiator with horrible judgment. I suppose reasonable people can disagree, but you still haven't explained how he can be a good man, and yet engage in the conduct I described. If I'm distorting his record, please feel free to point out where and how, but I think I've been pretty accurate.

Please understand: I dislike President Obama not because he is too liberal, but because he isn't nearly liberal enough. I am a registered Democrat, but I haven't made up my mind about Hillary, assuming she gets the nomination. A few months ago, I would have said there was no way in hell I would vote for her, but I'm trying to keep an open mind given the importance of this election.

Oh for Christ's sake, can you read? You claim that I "twisted" things, yet you don't explain how or what I twisted. YOU wrote that you thought President Obama was a "good" man, and I was providing evidence refuting that asssertion. HOW can a good man engage in such despotic, unconstitutional conduct? President Bush is a war criminal, and even HE didn't think he could kill Americans without due process.

I've been a Democrat all my life. If Elizabeth Warren were the Democratic nominee, I would vote for her, and the same goes for Bernie Sanders. But I won't vote for moderate Republicans like Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama.

In full disclosure, I’m a Democrat, and I definitely think President Obama’s image could be improved by pardoning Snowden.

President Obama has claimed he has the power to kill American citizens without due process. No other president in history has claimed such power, not even President George W. Bush. How many have died due to President Obama’s drone strikes?

President Obama gave himself the power to detain anyone, even an American, indefinitely and without trial by signing the Defense Authorization Act of 2012.

President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, causing the healthcare costs of tens of millions of Americans to continue to skyrocket.

President Obama has sent zero or one banker to jail for the economic collapse, depending on how you count. President Reagan sent dozens to jail for the S&L failures.

How many blacks have died at the hands of white police officers while President Obama and not one, but two black Attorneys General were in office?

President Obama has said himself that he would have been seen as a moderate Republican a few decades ago, but I disagree: he is a moderate Republican right now, beholden to corporate interests rather than the interests of the people.

He is NOT a good president, he’s a mediocre president at best who believes he has the powers of a monarch. Pardoning Edward Snowden would do a lot to rehabilitate his Republican image and governance.

Ad Hominem attacks are always welcome, but can you address my point? What specifically is hypocritical about my position? That I own a gun and didn't have to go through a mental health exam for my license? Bring it on, I'm happy to submit to an examination.

Great point, but where are they going to get that help anyway? We closed most of the public mental hospitals in the U. S. years ago, so a lot the mentally ill end up incarcerated, and that's not a good place for treatment.

Look, I agree with you: if you have something of value, you should choose to insure it, you shouldn't be forced to insure it. But that's not the country we live in, unfortunately.

But my car insurance doesn't just cover property damage, it covers bodily injury as well. If it turns out that I shot someone illegally, but didn't kill them, insurance would cover their hospital costs and lost income from their injuries.

What's wrong with that?

The background check that I had to undergo for my gun license was pathetic. It’s just not enough to search for criminal history, we need an invasive search for mental health issues. In these days of Google and ChoicePoint vacuuming up everything about us, it’s never been easier to gather information.

Why is it I need hundreds of dollars of insurance each year just to drive my car, but I don’t need ANY insurance for my handgun? They both can kill, and one of them is PRIMARILY for killing, so shouldn’t insurance be a requirement?

That would prevent a lot of poor gun owners from owning guns, but maybe this has gotten so out of hand that we need to restrict gun ownership.

I'm a total lefty, but Kerry, Albright, Rice, and Powell weren't running their own insecure servers which were hacked at least once that we know of. And none of those Secretaries of State claimed that they had done everything right in setting up such a server, and that it had been approved by the department, which the department subsequently denied.

Hillary Clinton either lied about this, or she was lied to by her staff. That the government has granted immunity to the staffer who set up the mail server leads me to believe that they've got her cold if she tries to claim she had no idea. I've been in IT for 25 years, and I've always protected myself by making my recommendations or warnings in writing to prevent just this sort of shifting of blame.

The Salon article today suggested that she just didn't follow State Department procedure, without ever mentioning that the department never sanctioned her server, or that her server had been hacked as a result of poor security. The article implies that other Secretaries did it too, so that makes it acceptable. Just absurd.

Years ago, the government sought to keep sources and methods classified so they could keep using them. OK, maybe that made sense.

But now, it’s routine for the government to deem evidence secret, or want secret access to someone’s data. We allowed private companies to gather information on everything we do, and now the government wants access to that information, ant secret access no less.

What have they got to fear? If the government is going to investigate me for software piracy and they want my ISP’s records, where is the harm in my being made aware of that? Shouldn’t I be able to plan for my defense?

Just as we’ve trained the police to view the citizen not as part of the community, but as the enemy, the government has taken secrecy tactics should only apply to terrorist suspects under active surveillance and used them against the populace at large.

It’s not the Internet that depends on it, it’s the security of all information which uses that encryption.

What do you think a sovereign nation would pay to obtain that master key? Even if the key were restricted to just a few government workers, being able to decrypt the traffic of Fortune 500 companies or foreign governments would be worth billions to any other nation, particularly if said nation could obtain the key in secret.

It’s almost like nobody saw “Sneakers” or something...

They keep reducing inventory, which means they expect lower sales, and as they do they’re reducing SG&A as well.

Perhaps Apple has been sitting on its $230B cash hoarde because they expect a worldwide depression soon. In that case, the paltry sums they’re spending on share repurchases via bond sales, as well as dividend payments, are just the price they have to pay to maintain so much cash, rather than reinvesting it in the business.

Apple is continuing to spend more and more on R&D, and they’ve always maintained they would innovate their way out of a predicament.