>>>SNIP
>>>>>
>>>>>IIRC, a federal law allows you to feed any excess power your home solar/wind generator my create back into the national grid, including running your meter backwards... i.e., the power company pays you. Is that law still active?
>>>>
>>>>Jerry;
>>>>
>>>>Yes it is - but I "do not trust them"! When solar generation becomes popular just watch the "public utilities" claim the energy from the sun as belonging to them! :)
>>>>
>>>You mean the same way that companies have patented specific DNA sequences (human and otherwise)? Hard to believe, but true!
>>
>>And those scientists making the patents did their research using public funds. When they reached the "breakthrough" level of knowledge, they took their newly learned knowledge and split to create private companies to exploit what we paid them to learn. Such knowledge should be public domain, but Congress rewards such thievery by allowing them to steal the knowledge for fractions of a penny on the dollar and patent it. Yes sir, we have the best congress money can buy.
>
>Yes, Congress is one thing to look at.
>
>But I wonder why it is that nobody seems the least bit concerned that our beloved CAPITALISM has run totally AMOK over the last 12 years????

Amok is an understatement, Jim. IMO, capitalism represents the greatest threat to our freedom, not fanatic Islamics. The fundamental problem is that judged by their business practices todays CEOs are at best amoral and unethical, if not immoral and corrupt. Can democracy survive their greed? This is one reason why I have embraced the GPL and the OpenSource movement and promote the community commons every chance I can. I was a conservative Republican since Goldware. They said if I voted for Goldwater there would be war. They were right. I voted for him and there was war. I left the Republican party 5 years ago over their treatment of Allen Keys in the debate at Alanta.
I still believe capitalism is better than socialism, but multi-national corporations have no community or national loyalty. They seem to exist to the benifit of only a few at the top. Most mom&pop businesses represent reponsible capitalism but BIG BIZ is driving them out of business.