Most of the examples of "good" random acts here are just terrible. Picking up a check of a random airport barfly? Paying the toll for whoever happens to be driving the SUV behind you? In either of these cases, you have no idea if the person receiving what is essentially a cash gift has any monetary need at all or in fact if they are more well-to-do than yourself. In fact, the situation guarantees that the recipient is much, much better off than the vast majority of this planet's miserable population—they can afford to fly and booze at overpriced airport bars, they are driving a vehicle on a freeway. In a world where need for basic necessities of life is so dire, these are obscene displays.

Instead of throwing away your cash, you should give it to those who are actually poor and suffering or to any endeavor that is making the world a better place.

Some of the other examples here are better. Changing a tire for someone is courteous and kind and within your direct power to help those around you and costs nothing. Giving gloves to a beggar is improving a destitute man's physical and psychological welfare and comfort. Those are good local, directed acts. Not smug, self-congratulatory and tacky displays of throwing cash to the winds as if you are making it rain at the club on the dance floor.

Go ahead and criticize me if you want, but if that's what floats your boat, and you honestly don't care about creating appearances, here's a random act of kindness I recommend to you: Go into a closet by yourself, pull a wad of bills from your wallet, light a match, and burn them to ashes. You've just decreased the money supply and through your random act of kindness made everyone else's money that much more valuable. And nobody ever has to know.

Randomly paying someones toll or feeding someone's meter not only is a senseless expenditure on behalf on an unknown carowner (a class that, as a whole sucks well more than its share of society's resources to begin with), but is also contrary the purposes of tolls and parking meters in the first place, which (other than to raise revenue) is to reduce highway and parking congestion and unnecessary car use. Your random act is not just wasteful, but antisocial.

In your anecdote you describe a very directed, nonrandom act, not what I was talking about at all.

And yes, who knows if the airport barfly is a struggling salesman with every right to his beery comfort. Lots of us have been there.

But in what universe is throwing that money at random, unsolicited, and without any indication of need, in the small off-chance it will pay for a down-and-outer's beer a rational act when it could be directed towards alleviating the suffering of billions who are in dire need, in danger of death, and crying for help?

Sure, it's your dime. But I still contend that these truly "random and spontaneous acts" by their very nature have at best no value except to make the giver feel good and powerful. By all means buy the next guy's round if you like, but don't count it as charity.

There's plenty of reasons to take issue with United Way, but they're not in the Random Act camp. They do vet their recipients and choose charities and community organizations with programs and needs.

But I'm of the mind that charity should not come in portfolios and that it's an inefficient way to give, so like you I try to identify individual needs and organizations that can effectively use the very limited gifts I can afford to make.

The best thing that can be said about United Way is that they get people and businesses to give to charity who wouldn't otherwise. The worst thing about the United Way is that they pressure people to give to programs they have no interest in--two sides of the same coin. Most truly generous people don't have any use for it.

This is populist cartoon high art at its best.

Your ideas don't pass the sniff test. And what's with this policy piece, unsupported by evidence, citation, authority, reference, or author's qualifications? Who are you, anyway? Not even a bio-blurb? Alright, Wikipedia tells me you're a think-tank member, journalist, historian, and former neoconservative. Great pundit credentials.

Unfortunately, the premise of your article fails. States issue bonds for the obvious reason that they have to balance the budget and they have no alternative to finance capital projects.

You have failed demonstrate why bonding is in any way better than deficit spending. Either way you're taking out public debt, just under one column or the other, and either way future taxpayers are paying for it, not just current taxpayers.

I know in these tough economic times Salon is turning to Open Salon and other routes for cheap content, but publishing these poorly thought-out think-tank ramblings? What next, featured content courtesy of Salon comments?

Even if they plea guilty before January 20, and even if the plea is accepted, even in the military commissions system, they will not be executed before Obama is inaugurated.

While constitutionally he could not then have them retried in courts martial or federal courts, he could prevent their execution by commuting the death sentence to a term of life, denying them their martyrdom. Then he could convene an independent investigation as to what sentence was appropriate given the facts, and more importantly, prevent this unjust commissions system from being abused in the future.