danalwyn

While everyone is celebrating over Obergefell:

Held: The Fourteenth Amendment requires a State to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-State

one should also not forget Texas Department of Housing:

Held: Disparate-impact claims are cognizable under the Fair Housing Act.

and King:

Held: Section 36B’s tax credits are available to individuals in States that have a Federal Exchange.

It's been a banner week for the court, approving gay marriage, upholding the Fair Housing Act, and continuing the ACA. It's also been a terrible week for Scalia. That's okay too. If you drew a Venn Diagram of Major Court Opinions I Agree With, and Major Court Opinions Scalia Dissents On you would only have to draw one circle.

Letter published as received:

To the members of the American Intelligence Community,

I feel I should say a few words of introduction to establish the seriousness of this complaint. Unlike most of those hippie protesters who have been sending you daily mail with half the words misspelled, I am a man of both import and business. Over the years I have single-handedly moved Lexcorp into a position of dominance in the business world, not only establishing a world-renown technological industry with the fruit of my own research, but also guiding my company through a series of deals and mergers that eventually turned us into the keystone of the American economy. Frankly, if it were not for that meddling Kryptonian alien, I would probably be President of Earth by now.

I say this not to brag, because I have no need of such, but because I want to establish the depth of experience that I am bringing to this question. Unlike you people, who have barely managed to figure out how a telephone works, I have invented entire surveillance networks, run a Fortune 500 company, dominated the American economy, and managed to retain enough public support to even be elected President of the United States, while at the same time engaging in a long string of unsavory experiments, destructive public works projects, and the occasional day when I tried to take over the world while fighting the entire Justice League using a suit of alien battle armor. Suffice it to say, I am an authority in almost every field where you are authorities in basically none.

So, I am writing to you regarding your new “PRISM” project, whatever it may be. I can understand the impetus behind it; there was a time when I also entertained notions of such minor petty projects to overthrow the rulership of the foolish masses. Of course with me it was when I was twelve. I had moved on to better projects by the age of fifteen, but not everyone can be so gifted. And of course I can understand why you hate and despise freedom, and applaud the fact that you recognize that the world would be better off in the hands of its natural leaders (which, by the way, does not include you. You will be informed of your position in the New World Order once we get around to it). But regardless of the intent and effects of your little scheme, I must inform you of a simple fact.

You are bad at Powerpoint. Stop. Just Stop. You’re giving perfectly reasonable self-respecting villains a bad name.

( Continuing... )

Note: I am about to make an argument with no regard to human values. That's on purpose. I'm not talking about helping people, but saving money. I can make an argument based on helping people too, and it's easy, but that's not this argument.

Everyone complains about the suburbs - it's become so common that it has passed through one end of cliche and out the other again. Environmentalists complain about suburbs. Drivers complain about suburbs. Urban planners complain about suburbs. Civil rights activists complain about suburbs. Cultural elites turn up their noses at the thought of the suburban cultural wasteland. Hipsters complain about suburbs as a matter of course. Teens complain about there being nothing to do out there - seniors grumble about how things were better when they lived wherever they did.

But one group that doesn't complain a great deal about suburbs is fiscal conservatives. This is because fiscal conservatives often seem to live in the suburbs, the bread and butter conservatives who fill the ranks of the Objectivist corps and the libertarian movement seem to prefer their nice house on a block full of identical houses, making suburbia the headquarters of the Independent American.

Which is odd, because there hasn't been a government social program that I can think of that has been funded at such a level for so long as the great suburban experiment. Of course there's no formal budget, but the US government spends an enormous amount of money on the suburbs.

How do they do that? Let's look at the ways:

( This Is How Much a White Picket Fence Costs )

As you've no doubt noticed, the internet is currently down.

Expect normal service to resume once Congress gets its head out of its ass.

Thank you,
-The Management