Intern is right. The last thing we need is the private sector writing software code. That should be handled by the government.

You're coming along nicely, intern. We'll make you one of us yet. Maybe we should all chip in and buy him some of that Hungarian Communist art?

Wow, my boyfriend and I payed waaaay less to stay in a private room in a hostel in Paris than the price of keeping an inmate in the county jail for the same amount of time. And as sketchy as that hostel was, it had to be nicer than a jail...

We take such delight in chronically underfunding public services - health, diplomacy, infrastructure, criminal justice, even the stupid liquor board.

At least it's given us lots of juicy items for Morning News each day (and starving our educational system's also made available a steady supply of cheap labor to cull and post the items for us, too).

Chance? It's called global warming. You need glaciers on your mountains if you don't want flooding.

If you properly fund education and health care, gus, then the terrorists win. Or something.

A truly amazing case of the mountain fighting back: The Frank Slide (would link if I knew how to on my phone) in British Columbia, where mining caused the side of a mountain to peel away and bury the town of Frank in a matter of seconds in the early 1900s.

Canuck, good morning! Here's a link on that - holy mackerel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Slide

Good morn to you, too! In honour of Goldy, I came in to work early, and am attempting to write our xmas letter in the form of a snarky rendition of the Christmas Alphabet--it isn't going so well....and isn't that rock slide something? The highway snakes right through it, so as you're driving you see the boulders mounded up on either side, and you imagine all the houses--and people, gaa--underneath...

Bitter and angry news intern is bitter and angry, hates whole human race and wishes everyone dead. Have a lovely Sunday morning!

Matt, I am thankful for your collection of global news items and for your expert use of the English language. I hope The Stranger editors know how much talent you give them au gratis.

The reason libertarians would like private corporations to control every aspect of our lives on a for-profit basis is because private companies are not managed by bureaucracies and would never screw anything up. Certainly not something as important as writing software! Or making sure sick people got the care they needed.

Sure, they're not really accountable to "voters" or "the citizenry," but they're accountable to The Market. It's like an invisible hand! And if enough of a company's customers die, by accident or because it saves the company money to deny them benefits, then that invisible hand will swoop down and force the company to do something about it or lose market share.

So don't trust in elected governments: Trust in magic invisible hands that make things all better, eventually.

The reason libertarians would like private corporations to control every aspect of our lives on a for-profit basis...

This is as no different than saying that Democrats are socialists who want government to control every aspect of our lives, as it's an obvious untruth, invented by someone who feels the need to falsely simplify the opposing viewpoints of others in order to pretend that he truly understands everything about those viewpoints. It's the left's version of the Tea Party mentality.

@12: You're right, most libertarians (those who aren't fabulously wealthy) say they don't want this. What they usually seem to want is some kind of utopian endless frontier where a man can succeed by his natural talents and the sweat of his brow. Maybe he grows okra on his little plot of land. Or makes handmade furniture in his little workshop. In his spare time he composes verse, paints, and plays the lute.

However, the means they choose to bring themselves closer to their private versions of utopia is to remove the last remaining fetters on the ability of massive corporations to buy and sell them. They are against every mechanism that enables individuals to stand up to that sort of power: They are against courts where citizens might seek redress; they are against collective bargaining for laborers; they are against a government that can place limits on pollution; in fact they seem to have no use for elected governments whatsoever.

So yes, I'm answering hyperbole with hyperbole. Sue me.

Jesus. Did y'all hire Stefan Sharkansky again?

@ Catalina -- Anything that involves children and Stalin, or even just a tractor, will do.

@ Ratatoskr -- Yeah, I thought of seeing how many nights you could stay in a Super 8 for $287.81, but the hostel example would be even more extreme. We need to stop locking people up, dammit.

@ Ken Mehlman -- Do you have any demonstrable proof of that? The TSA has not caught a single terrorist.

@ Canuck and Gus -- Wow, that is a pretty impressive little tale. Amazing that the whole operation was live again within a month, even back in 1903.

@ Keister Button -- Aww, you're making me blush!

@ Proteus -- You sure love strawmen. I'm not going to bother with libertarians, but I'll answer from the market anarchist perspective. "Massive corporations" only exist as clients of the state. When there is no state, they will have no ability to seek favors from clients they helped elect, they will have no ability to write regulations to favor their continued existence, etc. "Against courts"--not necessarily. I am just against courts in which the referee clearly plays for one team and not the other. Arbitration is an important part of any society. "Collective bargaining"--not opposed to it at all. It would just be nice to see it handled between employers and collectively bargaining employees, not enshrined in law with a corrupt state as adjudicator. "Limits on pollution"--you mean like the tragedy of the commons situations we see now where people overfish the oceans and such? Let people own those resources and they might do a better job of shepherding them.

@ Ken Mehlman -- You moved the goalposts. You originally claimed they were keeping the skies safer. Now you say they are keeping the skies safe....from drugs. "Oh no, they're going to blow up the plane with marijuana!!"

Even if you think the insane war on drugs that takes away American freedoms and leads Mexicans to get killed by the thousands makes sense (and I worry about you if you do), making Americans subject to privacy-violating, radiation-blasting scans in the name of narco-safety is a big leap to make.

@15: Strawmen? Like this?:

Remind me again why people trust these numbskulls to run their lives?

The people who believe that government should play a role in healthcare, including those like myself who would prefer a single-payer plan, are on the whole not any more interested in government "running their lives" than you are. But given that they need health coverage, they've concluded that they'd get a better deal from a plan administrated by an elected government than they can get from private companies whose incentive is to charge as much as possible for as little service as possible. Arguments about how government is inherently inefficient ("numbskulls") or bureaucratic are a dodge, because private companies are also bureaucratic and staffed with people culled from the same general population (which includes many numbskulls.) An examination of privatized public utilities will reveal just as many colossal fuck-ups as when they are run by public agencies, for instance.

As for allowing 100% private ownership of all resources as an answer to "tragedies of the commons," here's how I see that playing out:
Company A and Company B each own 50% of the world's fisheries. Company A decides that in order to have a business that will sustain itself in the long term, they are going to limit their harvests to sustainable levels and carefully "shepherd" the resource from which they derive their livelihood. They create a 100-year outlook and plan their catches accordingly.

Company B decides to catch every last fish they can, completely depleting their portion of the oceans in the process. After 5 years of direct competition with Company A, Company B is an order of magnitude wealthier than Company A. The scarcity of fish created by their overfishing and Company A's "careful shepherding" serves to drive up the market price for their product and further increase their profitability. At this point they purchase Company B.

Their shareholders, accustomed to the current profit-margins, approve a takeover plan to abandon Company B's long-term strategy in favor of the strategy that has worked so well thus far: relentless exploitation of the available resources. They also approve diversifying the business, thus ensuring that there will be new frontiers to exploit should the fishing business ever cease to be profitable.

If Luby believed anything he says about government, or corporations, or courts, he wouldn't yearn to become a Canadian. But he's only flailing around at whatever is in front of him at the moment. Today it's "governemnt numbskulls" and whatnot. Means nothing.

You know the reason he spouts a made-up fantasy political philosophy? Because if you you show him anything real, he'll find one flaw in it and condemn it as worthless. His only purpose is to convince others to hate life, people, and the world as much as he does.

Who lets Medicaid run their life?

Dearest Lord there's some crazy in here.

Much better post today Luby.

What I can tell you is that the company that built the Medicaid system went through a bidding process. So when you pick the lowest bid to build anything, you get what you paid for.

Fox in Socks, maybe you are reading different posts than I am, But..."bitter and angry, hates whole human race and wishes everyone dead"......honey, the only person penning bile-filled missives on this thread is you.

@ Proteus -- I'm not going to say that your fisheries example is impossible. I guess it could happen. One thing I would say is that Company B has to sell its products to someone or else they just have so much rotting fish. If they were really as ruthless and awful as you say, I think a lot of people would stop buying their products and they might well realize the advantages of a more sustainable model. Even if they didn't, conservationists could pool money and try to buy the oceans from them.

@ Fox in Socks -- Canuck already said it (thanks Canuck!), but the hate-filled stuff is in the mirror. I have a lot of confidence in humanity. I like people. I wouldn't harm a fly. Oh, and as far as going to Canada, it's a matter of not wanting my tax money to pay for war and imperialism any longer. I don't like blood on my hands. I don't expect you to understand this since you are the sort of person who doesn't care about the two awful wars we are fighting anymore because someone with a D next to his name is commander-in-chief.

@ svensken -- I aim to please!

Svensken, that's the punchline of a joke they tell on the City Light Skagit hydro tour as the bus goes across the top of Diablo Dam: the whole thing was built by the lowest bid.

But it's entirely possible to build a quality software program on lowest bid, just like you can build a quality dam. I've seen it done. When it fails, it's mostly the fault of the vendor for not managing the process, and throwing up alarms when the thing goes south.

Matt, every day you make up nonsense out of thin air, like this: "you are the sort of person who doesn't care about the two awful wars we are fighting anymore because someone with a D next to his name is commander-in-chief."

You're such a liar. How can you back up such libel?

Then you snidely put down people in all walks of life in your pissy little morning news commentary. Then, when anybody calls you on it, your defense is, "I know you are but what am I." Pathetic.

That's not even mentioning going out of your way to make life worse for the workers at QFC just for the sake of being a little prick.

Oh, and dumbfuck, Canada has been in up to their necks in all the same military adventures as the US. You're delusional.

And next chance you get, you'll spew out another little angry attack on whatever the Stranger lets you go after, arrogantly taking a piss on the work of serious people trying to make life better for somebody else. All to reinforce your easy superiority and lazy disengagement from making grownup choices.

And somebody will call bullshit on you and you'll say "Try harder! I know you are but what am I?" Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.

@Catalina

You are completely correct. Software is not comparable to structures or social services. However it is sad that such an important program is suffering from incompetence.

@21,22 and 28 FTW.

@ Fox in Socks -- It's always so circular with you. You're pretty obviously just trolling. Whatever makes you happy, I guess. The one thing I'm going to point out is that your comment about Canada is simply false. Canada was one of only a handful of countries to speak truth to U.S. power in the run-up to the war in Iraq. There's still no Canadian troops there today. So please don't rope them into one of the greatest, bloodiest, and most unnecessary debacles in the history of the American Empire.

Trolling, Matt? Really? You do realize there is nobody as offensive as you associated with the Stranger? Mudede is a little odd sometimes, Stefan Sharkansky was merely a run of the mill conservative, and A. Birch Steen is fictional. But you? You are a bad, bad man.

And instead of stopping to think about the bad things you do and the harmful things you say, you think up evasions to avoid taking your critics seriously. Circular. I know you are but what am I? Trolling. You tell yourself anything to delegitimize your opponents.

Try this one out instead: take a fucking look at yourself.

"Massive corporations" only exist as clients of the state. When there is no state, they will have no ability to seek favors from clients they helped elect, they will have no ability to write regulations to favor their continued existence, etc.

You just made really emotional. Awesome.

As far "lowest bidder" situations -- it really is about screening the companies we select, holding them accountable, and project managing them like crazy. Choosing the highest bidder would produce equally bad results without proper vetting and oversight.