In some cases, it is unconstitutional to cut the pay. For example, federal judges salaries and the President's are protected by the constitution from being cut (or not paid) by Congress.

Article II Sec 7 of the U.S. Constitution restricts the authority of Congress to alter the President's compensation:

"The President shall, at stated times, receive for his services, a compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the period for which he shall have been elected[.]"

Article III Sec 1 of the U.S. Constitution similarly restricts Congress' authority to not pay judges:

"The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office."

Some things, like Social Security payments have permanent authority and appropriation. Those continue forever as long as there is money to pay.

A problem government agencies have had with making data available is the IT cost of distributing it. For the longest time the Patent Office has made patents a pain-in-the-ass to download not because the patents are not public documents, but because they could not handle the demand. So they told the public to go buy them from private companies if they wanted good service.

If that problem has just been passed on to the entire Federal Government, it is an ineffective command.

I tutor inner city children taught in the Chicago Public Schools. I wish most of them could execute a five-paragraph essay. Quite frankly, I wish I could get single paragraphs with topic sentences, explanatory sentences and summarization at the end. For many 6th graders, single sentences with grammar and spelling is beyond.

For the best students, some of the hangup is indeed getting the first ideas down. These I teach to get it out (the vomit draft) and fix it later. Others can work with a "vomit outline" fix that, and write from there. But for half of them, going by complete formula would be a significant accomplishment.

Alas, teaching 35 kids at a time means those city teachers have to teach at a level that includes most of the class. So our author may be right for some parents improving their children at home, but misses what public school has to do.

Amazon already shows commercials for their own shows at the beginning of Amazon Prime viewing. It is already here.

When thinking long-term about an area of science or technology, it is important to think about sustaining the development and retention of people across multiple professional generations. The government should be planning in terms of how many people it is going to sustain in developing fusion power for multiple decades and then do it. You have to pay the people, and you have to pay for the machines that the people are going to build to learn more. Otherwise you end up losing the people who know what they are doing, and paying extra to develop the talent again.Sure, it may take 100 years, but you have to fund consistently over that period or it will take 150.

I remember when they were predicting lithium shortages for EVs. Didn't happen. It may be that environmentalists have to decide which of their loathed pollutions to live with: byproduct of magnet materials or carbon, but the materials can be obtained if not outlawed.

Congress does CAFE because they are cowards. A car with higher efficiency can be driven more on the same gas. It does not reduce consumption by existing cars. If you genuinely believe in the cause, the only thing to advocate is taxation of fuel. A tax increase for the social cost of gasoline is something like $3.80 a gallon, more than doubling the current price. C'mon true believes, don't put off saving the planet for decades, bite the bullet and advocate that tax increase.

I am so glad for your post. I had taken time to look at the publication, and though I am not a researcher, it looked oversold. I also was taken aback when I saw it was with metastatic cancer because the holy grail is early detection, an area I have thought research for early detection has been horrifically underfunded for decades. We spend hundreds of billions on research and treatment of advanced cancers and hardly anything on developing early detection that would greatly reduce the risks to cancer sufferers and the cost of treatment.

Why blame the healthcare system when the population is so unhealthy? A healthcare system can't fix people killing themselves and then showing up for help. Only 12% of the US adult population is metabolically healthy.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencedaily.com%2Fr...

The healthcare system also has challenges that many other countries don't have: unhealthy people and populations that are heterogeneous both culturally and in ancestry. Is it perfect? No. But looking at results only as opposed to inputs and results is ignorant.

When the 1996 Telecommunications Act was being drafted, the intersection of the internet and personal communications devices was in its infancy. Browsers and hypertext pages that made the internet usable by ordinary people were only a few years old. Congress thought it understood the emerging marketplace and technology. It was wrong. There is nothing shocking about them being wrong about it. They gave the FCC a framework within which to make rules, but when the framework doesn't match the technology and marketplace there is no objective, technical, reconciliation that can happen. So the rules lurch with the winds of whatever the current administration is.

Congress should revisit the law, make the key political decisions and compromises, and pass a revised law. There was a failed effort to do it, but it is worth trying again. Otherwise we have an unending mess of the rules twisting in the political winds of whoever is president forever.

The cash penalty should include forfeiture provisions for money made from the misbehavior. A lot of these guys have options that would tank if that happened. It would also give boards of directors and shareholders reasons to worry about the issue too.

Coal is used for many reasons. Look at Germany: it is turning to coal from nuclear. Do you think this report is going to have Germany do an about-face on closing its nuclear plants by 2022? I don't. For some countries, coal is a secure source of power. They do have coal and they do not have natural gas, for example. The technology for obtaining coal is low and practical for many developing and undeveloped countries. Non-hydro renewables and nuclear are not. Also, non-hydro renewables are not 24/7 power, and the grid needs that.

Coal is estimated by the International Energy Agency to shrink 0.1% a year through 2050. So yeah, it is trending down, but not by an amount that means anything. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eia.gov%2Foutlooks%2Fa...

Another case where the installed base wins over new things because it is too disruptive to change it.

The school scheduling equivalent of COBOL.

What is lost here is that umpires are not making unforced errors in ball and strike calls. Catchers at the major league level can be very skilled at manipulating the umpire's perception of pitch location. It is called "pitch framing." It is sort of like pitchers asking for the threads on the baseball to be white instead of red so that batters cannot pick up ball spin. You are changing the game to remove a skill the opposing player has from the game. You better bet that a lot of batters swing more with 2 strikes because even if the batter is right that the pitch is in theory a ball, that the catcher might still steal that third strike.

Also, you never want to take all of the "coulda, shoulda, woulda" from the fan. He has to explain to himself why his team lost without blaming the team. The officials are a great target for that.

Pai was announcing an upcoming report from the FCC's inspector general. That inspector general is David L. Hunt. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fcc.gov%2Finspector-general He was appointed in 2011, during the Obama administration, http://thehill.com/policy/technology/137015-david-hunt-named-fcc-inspector-general So this an Obama appointee reporting on an Obama appointee, not Pai going after an Obama administration official.