I was coming home from work yesterday and needed some gas. As I was approaching the station that I normally go to I was literally shocked to see that their price was $3.07/gallon. I don't follow gas prices much but it wasn't too much earlier that I was pleased that prices were down to $2.83/gallon. It wasn't just this station either. There were three in the same area and they were all charging $3.07.
This is the highest price that I've ever seen in Jacksonville. Considering that it seems like everyone here drives big pickup and SUV's that make about 15 MPG. At that rate you are spending 20 cents a mile just for gas.
Here in Jax we have a lot of folks who come into town from the outlying areas to work. ...and they don't drive Toyota Yaris's. I wonder at what point these people are going to have to make some hard choices. Move closer to town, buyer more efficient vehicles, or work more. Philosophically it's hard to imagine people being slaves to a commodity without blaming the government. I feel the same way about healthcare but that's a separate article.
So my question is at what point will the gas prices irreversibly affect the US economy? Trucks that supply all the Wal-marts run on deisel. Employees are going to ask employers for more money to subsidize their commutes. Service-based companies like plumbers, electricians, etc are going to pass on the charge to customers. Hmmmm... sounds like inflation.
So, on top of high gas prices we'll have high service prices???!!! Who will be able to afford all the niceties of having a new deck built, re-designing their kitchens, or taking nice vacations. Hmmm... sounds like recession.
What is the tipping point that leads us to this? $7.00/gallon, $5/gallon $3.07/gallon.?
Our cities are not designed for mass transit. They are not even designed for people to bike to work. They are designed for people to drive their cars from wherever they live to their jobs and back with lots of space in between.
Should be an interesting next couple of years to watch this rollercoaster.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
New Improved Property Tax Plan. Yeah Right!!
There was a Point of View article in the Florida Times Union today from Mark Rubio who is the Florida Speaker of the house touting the new Property Tax plan that claim to reduce local government taxing and spending, provide significant and immediate tax relief to taxpayers, and give Floridians the opportunity to vote for meaningful and comprehensive property tax reform.
What he doesn't mention is that he is taking what is currently a local tax to pay for local services such as trash pickup, libraries, public works, etc and turning it over to the state to dole out. What you are going to end up seeing every year is a parade of county officials going to Tallahassee with hat in hand to beg the state to give their money back to them. Sometimes they will, sometimes they wont. Anyone familiar with politics knows that whoever controls the purse strings controls the policy. How many times have we seen the Feds extort policy changes out of the states by threatening to withhold highway funds, many times for issues that had nothing to do with roads.
Next he goes into his formula that confronts what he says in the state's biggest problem: unaffordable and unfair property taxes.
Florida's House doesn't know what high property taxes are. Here in Duval county I pay 1.81825% of my property value in taxes. In my hometown of Syracuse, NY it is currently 2.61583%. ...and their economy stinks too.
Under his proposal 80% of the first $300,000 of value is exempt, 70% of the next $700,000 and 30% on properties over a million. Oh happy day, this is great!! That means that your average $300,000 home that currently pays $5000/yr in taxes is now only going to pay $1090.90.
Hang on buster, this is the government that we're talking about!! Mr. Rubio is conveniently leaving out what the new tax rate is. He'll leave it to us to assume that it'll be the same. I'm sure that Joe Average in his $300,000 house is going to end up paying the exact amount they are paying today. What that means is that instead of paying 1.81825% of your assessed property value in taxes you're going to pay 8.3333% on the new assessed value. On the plus side the folks living in a $1,000,000 will have a tax increase from $17,727 to $22,500. If by some miracle they keep the same rate then they will also save the most because their taxes will now be $4909.28. That won't happen. How could they possibly make up the shortfall.
There are so many holes in Mr. Rubio's argument that the middle-class should take a hard, close look at this bill and then reject it outright as a power grab by the state that will turn into a classic bait-and-switch in short order. If it looks too good to be true, it is.
Keep your money local. If your county wants to change it's tax structure then that is their peragative with your input. Don't put it in the hands of the state who will use it for political leverage instead of the good of the municipalities it's meant for.
What he doesn't mention is that he is taking what is currently a local tax to pay for local services such as trash pickup, libraries, public works, etc and turning it over to the state to dole out. What you are going to end up seeing every year is a parade of county officials going to Tallahassee with hat in hand to beg the state to give their money back to them. Sometimes they will, sometimes they wont. Anyone familiar with politics knows that whoever controls the purse strings controls the policy. How many times have we seen the Feds extort policy changes out of the states by threatening to withhold highway funds, many times for issues that had nothing to do with roads.
Next he goes into his formula that confronts what he says in the state's biggest problem: unaffordable and unfair property taxes.
Florida's House doesn't know what high property taxes are. Here in Duval county I pay 1.81825% of my property value in taxes. In my hometown of Syracuse, NY it is currently 2.61583%. ...and their economy stinks too.
Under his proposal 80% of the first $300,000 of value is exempt, 70% of the next $700,000 and 30% on properties over a million. Oh happy day, this is great!! That means that your average $300,000 home that currently pays $5000/yr in taxes is now only going to pay $1090.90.
Hang on buster, this is the government that we're talking about!! Mr. Rubio is conveniently leaving out what the new tax rate is. He'll leave it to us to assume that it'll be the same. I'm sure that Joe Average in his $300,000 house is going to end up paying the exact amount they are paying today. What that means is that instead of paying 1.81825% of your assessed property value in taxes you're going to pay 8.3333% on the new assessed value. On the plus side the folks living in a $1,000,000 will have a tax increase from $17,727 to $22,500. If by some miracle they keep the same rate then they will also save the most because their taxes will now be $4909.28. That won't happen. How could they possibly make up the shortfall.
There are so many holes in Mr. Rubio's argument that the middle-class should take a hard, close look at this bill and then reject it outright as a power grab by the state that will turn into a classic bait-and-switch in short order. If it looks too good to be true, it is.
Keep your money local. If your county wants to change it's tax structure then that is their peragative with your input. Don't put it in the hands of the state who will use it for political leverage instead of the good of the municipalities it's meant for.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
No Terrorist Attack at Fort Dix
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-plot9may09,0,5722696.story
Six foreign born Muslims were arrested for planning an attack against the Fort Dix army base in New Jersey.
"The men allegedly had discussed trying to kill hundreds of people on the base with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades."
Lemme see if I got this straight...
Six yahoos are going to somehow get onto one of our military bases and kill hundreds of trained soldiers? Yeah right.
I would love to know who the source of the quoted information is above. Is it the journalist, the FBI, the plotters, or a governement official? I would bet it's someone with a vested interest in exxagerating the real capabilities of "The Dix Six".
I want to state something and hopefully I'll never have to say it again: YOU CANNOT HAVE A TERRORIST ATTACK AGAINST A MILITARY TARGET !!!
Terrorist attacks are against civilian targets. If it's against a military target then its a Military Attack. If you can terrorize our military then we are in real trouble.
The media is responsible for their mislabeling, and misleading stories. This one is courtesy of the LA Times.
Six foreign born Muslims were arrested for planning an attack against the Fort Dix army base in New Jersey.
"The men allegedly had discussed trying to kill hundreds of people on the base with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades."
Lemme see if I got this straight...
Six yahoos are going to somehow get onto one of our military bases and kill hundreds of trained soldiers? Yeah right.
I would love to know who the source of the quoted information is above. Is it the journalist, the FBI, the plotters, or a governement official? I would bet it's someone with a vested interest in exxagerating the real capabilities of "The Dix Six".
I want to state something and hopefully I'll never have to say it again: YOU CANNOT HAVE A TERRORIST ATTACK AGAINST A MILITARY TARGET !!!
Terrorist attacks are against civilian targets. If it's against a military target then its a Military Attack. If you can terrorize our military then we are in real trouble.
The media is responsible for their mislabeling, and misleading stories. This one is courtesy of the LA Times.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
The Essence of Conservatism
This is not my writing but I read it recently and thought it was interesting. I can only ascribe this to someone who uses the handle 'ezeflyer':
"People say that conservatives are those who have the most to conserve. The richer they are, the more conservative they become and it seems, the more greedy and fearful of losing their hoard and power.
Their religious zeal helps conservatives lose the guilt for the depredations they cause. Superstition, homophobia, racism, sexism, punishment, fearmongering, warmongering, crime and other forms of authoritarian behaviour, they call “traditions”, “patriotism” and “God fearing”. With these handles they manipulate the poor, middle class and simply rich conservative believers of their propaganda, like lambs led to slaughter.
Nature controls the amount of resources any animal can hoard by limiting these to what the animal can personally defend, enabling diversity, competition and natural selection. Money enables the human animal to monopolize and hoard resources without limits, circumventing natural selection. That’s why modern conservatives are sorry examples of human beings.
Republicans are uniformly conservative authoritarian beasts. The more beastly, the more they deny their bestial nature. We are not animals they say, because we are smarter, or have souls, or possess some other divine characteristics that separate us from beasts. But conservatives daily prove to be the followers of Mammon the proverbial biblical beast.
Republicans and Democrats are ruled by conservative’s money. Yet conservatives have become freaks of nature who don’t rule by strength, intelligence and information like their alpha male animal counterparts. They rule by self defeating, world destroying, unfettered greed enabled by unlimited hoarding of money-power. As opposed to their animal cousins, the dumbest and weakest rule for the most corrupt."
"People say that conservatives are those who have the most to conserve. The richer they are, the more conservative they become and it seems, the more greedy and fearful of losing their hoard and power.
Their religious zeal helps conservatives lose the guilt for the depredations they cause. Superstition, homophobia, racism, sexism, punishment, fearmongering, warmongering, crime and other forms of authoritarian behaviour, they call “traditions”, “patriotism” and “God fearing”. With these handles they manipulate the poor, middle class and simply rich conservative believers of their propaganda, like lambs led to slaughter.
Nature controls the amount of resources any animal can hoard by limiting these to what the animal can personally defend, enabling diversity, competition and natural selection. Money enables the human animal to monopolize and hoard resources without limits, circumventing natural selection. That’s why modern conservatives are sorry examples of human beings.
Republicans are uniformly conservative authoritarian beasts. The more beastly, the more they deny their bestial nature. We are not animals they say, because we are smarter, or have souls, or possess some other divine characteristics that separate us from beasts. But conservatives daily prove to be the followers of Mammon the proverbial biblical beast.
Republicans and Democrats are ruled by conservative’s money. Yet conservatives have become freaks of nature who don’t rule by strength, intelligence and information like their alpha male animal counterparts. They rule by self defeating, world destroying, unfettered greed enabled by unlimited hoarding of money-power. As opposed to their animal cousins, the dumbest and weakest rule for the most corrupt."
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
America Loves Torture
America has really come to embrace the idea of torture. It was once viewed as something that Americans would never condone, much less make a public policy.
The tide turned when Alberto Gonzales called the Geneva Conventions regarding torture "quaint" and then said that they didn't apply because we weren't holding "Prisoners of War", we were holding "Enemy Combatants" which is a term never heard before in international policy.
Next was the propaganda storm that these "terrorists" were pure evil and the only way to prevent future 9/11's was to pull their information out by force. There was no other way, that's how crazy these terrorists are.
Once you have one group that you are willing to torture then the slide towards using it on anyone is a quick and easy journey.
The TV show '24' made a situational case for it. If someone (i.e. A Terrorist) had information that might prevent the deaths of thousands of people would it be OK to torture the information out of them. Many Americans said yes, with a big smile.
The real indication of widespread acceptance is that torture is now featured in many hit movies. While gore has existed in movies for decades it was usually relagated to the quick kill, ala Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street. Rarely did a movie come out like The Marathon Man where someone was shown being slowly, methodically, tortured by another person. It was just considered too disturbing to most people.
Now there has been a glut of movies like the Saw series and Hostel that feature it and advertise it to draw folks into the theatre.
This is a subtle but clear indication of America's downward slide as a moral leader in the world. We used to be able to point at the government and say that it's not us, it's them, but increasingly we have to look deeply into our souls as a people and realize that we are no longer different than them.
The tide turned when Alberto Gonzales called the Geneva Conventions regarding torture "quaint" and then said that they didn't apply because we weren't holding "Prisoners of War", we were holding "Enemy Combatants" which is a term never heard before in international policy.
Next was the propaganda storm that these "terrorists" were pure evil and the only way to prevent future 9/11's was to pull their information out by force. There was no other way, that's how crazy these terrorists are.
Once you have one group that you are willing to torture then the slide towards using it on anyone is a quick and easy journey.
The TV show '24' made a situational case for it. If someone (i.e. A Terrorist) had information that might prevent the deaths of thousands of people would it be OK to torture the information out of them. Many Americans said yes, with a big smile.
The real indication of widespread acceptance is that torture is now featured in many hit movies. While gore has existed in movies for decades it was usually relagated to the quick kill, ala Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street. Rarely did a movie come out like The Marathon Man where someone was shown being slowly, methodically, tortured by another person. It was just considered too disturbing to most people.
Now there has been a glut of movies like the Saw series and Hostel that feature it and advertise it to draw folks into the theatre.
This is a subtle but clear indication of America's downward slide as a moral leader in the world. We used to be able to point at the government and say that it's not us, it's them, but increasingly we have to look deeply into our souls as a people and realize that we are no longer different than them.
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