Still think rail is the answer?

The chief of Seattle’s monorail, off-line since Aug. 20 after two trains stalled following a nine-month shutdown for repairs, says it needs a $4.5 million overhaul.

Now to be fair, this is an old (built in 1962) rail system. But maintenance costs for such projects are only going to continue to rise.

Link.  

This incident is so analogous to what happened at Iolani Palace on Statehood Day. It is all about hatred of America. Nothing more.

After being at the rally for a while, we noticed that the opposition was getting louder and they we watched as they took the American flag off of the flag pole and stepped on it on the ground at the United State Post Office and mounted a Mexican flag and up it went. At this point the police did nothing. Finally, they went over to take it down and they had bottles and rocks thrown at them. They did not attempt to arrest anyone. 

Link. 

This is a one page pdf file from the US Treasury you really should see.

Without tax relief, millions of Americans will see their taxes go up by billions of dollars in 2011. 

A Family of Four with Two Children…

􀂃 $50k annual income today ($56,300 in 2011) = $2,092 increase (from $1,583 to $3,675 tax bill) = 132% higher tax bill; or􀂃 $60k annual income today ($67,600 in 2011) = $1,858 increase (from $3,207 with to $4,275) = 58% higher tax bill.

Link.

This is interesting on two fronts. First is that Hawaii is among the 5 lowest states for obesity rates. Second is that the reason for this is given as being related to having less poverty. This isn’t the general take on poverty around here.

Meanwhile, the five states with the lowest obesity have less poverty. They are Colorado, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont.

The rest of the article goes into the usual fear-mongering about how obesity is an “epidemic” and all the government programs that should be implemented to combat this epidemic.  

 One aspect of the report makes it somewhat suspect.

The data comes from an annual random sampling of adults via the telephone.

How accurate can that be?

Whole article here.

These two links are related to attacking federal spending from two different angles.

CUT Unnecesary Spending

and

a Pork DataBase.

 Both great ideas.

Ever wonder if that noisy, smelly moped with the cloud of smoke behind it was better for the environment or not? Here’s the answer:

. . . the two-stroke scooter WW tested produced about 490 times the hydrocarbons and more than eight times the Co2 of the SUV.

(By the way, they call mopeds ’scooters’ on the Mainland, same thing.)  

You might be saving gasoline, mopeds are far more fuel efficent but this is certainly offset by the amount of “greenhouse gasses” produced by that vehicle.

How long is going to be before we discover just how damaging to the environment “ethanol” is?

Full article here.  

This from Wisconsin:

Badger Ethanol in Monroe charges around $2.22 for a gallon of E-85, an alcohol-fuel mixture that is 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline, by volume.

Badger’s owners wanted to cut the price to $2 but said they had to artificially hike prices after some competitors complained Badger wasn’t meeting the state’s minimum markup laws.

. . .

Wisconsin Consumer Protection investigators launched a probe into Badger’s fuel prices and found E-85 selling for just over $2 a gallon.

Based on a complicated formula, the investigators said the price should have been $1 more.

How many more cases are there of government making gasoline more expensive, not to mention excessive taxation? 

Whole article here. 

This is where the profits really go:

The top 20 U.S. and Canadian oil companies actually invested 50 percent more than they earned in the past 10 years in efforts to produce more oil, but adverse geopolitical developments conspired to give them fewer opportunities to expand production while fading oil fields in the U.S. and elsewhere forced them to spend substantially more just to maintain current production, according to the study by the Ernst & Young accounting firm.  

You won’t read this kind of thing every day. 

Whole article here.

It isn’t just the size of the deficit but this sentence from this article:

Congress has written its own accounting rules — which would be illegal for a corporation to use because they ignore important costs such as the growing expense of retirement benefits for civil servants and military personnel. 

This is so typical of all levels of government and at the root cause of nearly every problem in society today.

Government gives itself monopolies that would be illegal for anyone else, wavers from laws that would be illegal for anyone else and special privileges that would be illegal for anyone else that then does everything it, (government and those who run it) can do hide what it is really doing.

Article here.