The best solution would be to return all the gas tax money to the states, roughly in proportion to the money each pays in. This would allow states and localities to determine which roads and transit projects they really need—and are willing to pay for.
Except that it seems this sentence could be even better. It should read:
The best solution would be to returnrepeal theallfederal gas tax money to the states, and roughly in proportion to the money each pays inallow each state to tax gas as it sees fit in order to pay for whatever transportation projects the residents of each state feels is necessary. This would allow states and localities to determine which roads and transit projects they really need—and are willing to pay for. And it would keep a good chunk of the tax I pay in the form of the $.18 per gallon federal gas tax from going towards urban public transit systems that I don’t fucking use.
We’ve long known that the federal government seems to have jumped the shark quite some time ago, but it’s juxtapositions such as these which should loudly tell the American people that unless you’re politically connected, you’re fucked. RealClearMarkets:
Justice may be blind, but who works overtime to make it deaf, dumb, and stupid?
Which would you imagine might attract more aggressive enforcement from the Justice Department: the theft of $1.2 billion from supposedly segregated customer brokerage funds, or lying about an alleged incident of whistling to attract the attention of a whale so that whale watchers could get a better peep? If you said the latter, then you appreciate the extent to which federal law enforcement priorities have run off the rails.
We know for a fact that enormous sums of money legally off limits have disappeared into the maw of disgraced Senator John Corzine’s gambling counterparties, all of whom seem to have taken the oath of omerta. We know that Corzine personally asked employees at MF Global, the financial firm he headed until recently, to transfer the funds. We know that his underlings balked at signing false statements attesting the transfers to be legal. So how is it that the man ultimately responsible for this brazen theft and spectacular bankruptcy gets away with performing a perfunctory Sergeant Schultz “I know nothing” routine in front of his old Senate buddies, after which he is left free to walk out the door without handcuffs?
Meanwhile, marine biologist and whale watching ship captain Nancy Black faces 20 years in prison, not for “harassing” whales (which believe it or not is a crime), but because she has been charged with lying to Justice Department prosecutors investing allegations that some of her crew members whistled at a whale to keep it hanging around their boats.
You can’t make this stuff up.
The politically connected can apparently get away with stealing shitloads of cash, but a fib about whistling at a whale gets you in serious trouble. The only priority that the feds have is making sure that no ill comes to their own.
The government spent at least $205,075 in 2010 to “translocate” a single bush in San Francisco that stood in the path of a $1.045-billion highway-renovation project that was partially funded by the economic stimulus legislation President Barack Obama signed in 2009.
“In October 2009, an ecologist identified a plant growing in a concrete-bound median strip along Doyle Drive in the Presidio as Arctostaphylos franciscana,” the U.S. Department of Interior reported in the Aug. 10, 2010 edition of the Federal Register. “The plant’s location was directly in the footprint of a roadway improvement project designed to upgrade the seismic and structural integrity of the south access to the Golden Gate Bridge.
“The translocation of the Arctostaphylos franciscana plant to an active native plant management area of the Presidio was accomplished, apparently successfully and according to plan, on January 23, 2010,” the Interior Department reported.
The bush—a Franciscan manzanita—was a specimen of a commercially cultivated species of shrub that can be purchased from nurseries for as little as $15.98 per plant. The particular plant in question, however, was discovered in the midst of the City of San Francisco, in the median strip of a highway, and was deemed to be the last example of the species in the “wild.”
$205K to move a plant. One that can be bought for as little as $15 at any Home Depot in California. Only government could create a situation as stupid as this one. Great job, guys. Bravo.
The scientists had read Kareiva’s recent essay, which takes environmentalists to task. The data couldn’t bear out their piety, he wrote. Nature is often resilient, not fragile. There is no wilderness unspoiled by man. Thoreau was a townie. Conservation, by many measures, is failing. If it is to survive, it has to change.
How could this be coming from the Nature Conservancy?
“We love the horror story,” Kareiva said. He was dressed in New Balance running shoes, a purple sweater and rumpled tan trousers. “We just love it. The environmental movement has loved it. That, I think, is … [a] strategy failure. And it’s actually not supported by science.”
This is not some vague hypothesis, he added to murmurs. He’s seen it in the data.
“The message [has been that] humans degrade and destroy and really crucify the natural environment, and woe is me,” he said. “The reality is humans degrade and destroy and crucify the natural environment — and 80 percent of the time it recovers pretty well, and 20 percent of the time it doesn’t.”
One of the visitors, Lisa Hayward, an ecologist working on invasive-species policy at the U.S. Geological Survey, spoke up. How can that be so? “I feel that does not represent the consensus of the ecological community,” she said.
“I’m certain that it doesn’t represent the consensus of the ecological community,” Kareiva shot back, with a smile and flash in his eyes. A circle of nervous laughter swayed around the room. “I’m absolutely certain of that! Wait two years.”
Kareiva has never feared following the data, or dragging others with him. Already a respected ecologist, for the past decade he has shoved the Nature Conservancy toward a new environmentalism. The old ways aren’t working. Inch by inch, for better or worse, conservation must, he says, enter the Anthropocene Epoch — the Age of Man.
It’s all about the data, not the “consensus.” Data. Data that hasn’t been doctored. Data that isn’t designed to illicit more grant money. Data that is vetted against all of the other data in the field, not only the chosen parts. A consensus should be understood as nomenclature for “we have no idea, but we do have an agenda to uphold.” In real science, a consensus means dick. Just the very idea of a consensus is a product of groupthink, not science. Good for Nature Conservancy for recognizing it.
Avril Mulcahy, 83, was told to address the “green travelling issues” over her journeys from her home in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, to the West Road Surgery. The surgery wrote to Mrs Mulcahy, telling her to register with a new GP within 28 days.
The letter said: “Our greatest concern is for your health and convenience but also taking into consideration green travelling issues. Re: Carbon footprints and winter weather conditions, we feel it would be advisable for patients to register at surgeries nearer to where they live.
“We would be very grateful if you could make the necessary arrangements to re-register at another practice.”
Mrs Mulcahy, a grandmother, believes the decision was made because she complained about a doctor.
“When I read through the letter, I found it absolutely ridiculous they were saying the reason was to decrease their carbon footprint,” she said. “I have been a patient at the practice for 30 years now, and there has never been any problem.
A woman is refused medical treatment because the carbon footprint of her 4 mile drive is too large? How I’m looking forward to government run health care where completely unrelated political considerations determine whether an elderly woman can or cannot receive medical care at her doctor of choice.
I’m sure the judge gives leniency to every defendant who cries before the court. The New York Daily News:
He cried — and the judge cut him loose.
A disgraced NYPD detective convicted of planting drugs on an innocent couple was looking at jail time when he walked into court on Thursday.
He walked out with probation after blubbering that he was ashamed of himself and pleading for mercy.
“I can’t look at myself in the mirror anymore,” Jason Arbeeny told Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Gustin Reichbach.
“Sir, I am begging you, please don’t send me to jail.”
In a bench trial, Reichbach found Arbeeny guilty of “flaking” — framing two people by planting crack in their car during a 2007 bust.
Arbeeny, who was on the force for 14 years, tearfully apologized to his victims.
“My oath went down the window, my pride went out the window,” he said.
Reichbach admitted the weepy mea culpa got to him.
“I came into court this morning determined that the nature of this crime requires some jail time,” he said.
“I frankly didn’t expect the defendant, at the 11th hour, to be making these claims.”
He then sentenced him to five years’ probation and 300 hours of community service. He said each hour Arbeeny spends speaking to cops or police recruits about his misdeeds will count as two.
Why hasn’t he been charged with crack possession? Though the officer is surely entitled to have crack when in an official capacity, say after having found them on a violent perpetrator, planting drugs on a defendant doesn’t fall under that rubric, and he should be charged, and sentenced, just like the rest of us would have been. If you don’t believe that there is a double standard when it comes to arresting and charging members of law enforcement, you’re a fucking idiot.
Striking down the statute could really rev up the president’s base — add fuel to their current political mantra fire about a ‘war on women.’ I can think of the ads now, can’t you? The president’s enthusiasm level among his supporters has been sagging — something that happens during a second term campaign — and he needs something to throw his weight behind to really drive his supporters to the polls. An existing health care law won’t do it since it feels a bit like, ‘been there, done it.’ Striking the law down, on the other hand, could really be used to put political panic in his supporters.
Yeah. Having a law, one that represents an entire presidency, struck down by the Supreme Court as inherently threatening to the liberty of the American people is a good thing because it might mean that he has a chance of getting re-elected. This kind of thinking is fucking stupid, and is absolutely representative of what’s wrong in American politics. It’s okay if a law gets struck down, one that has been labeled as necessary to the health of America, because “our guy” will still be in power.
From Facebook communications to tweets, you’re no doubt already aware that nothing you do online is truly private. But should you have a reasonable expectation that your superiors aren’t actively spying on you? That’s the question a lot of people are asking after Garrett High School in Indiana expelled a high school senior for cursing over Twitter during off-school hours.
The tweet in question dropped the F-bomb a number of times, but was otherwise non-threatening. It was posted at 2:30 a.m. — a time when the student in question was most assuredly not at school. Still, despite the evidence, the school stands by its decision to expel the student.
How did the school discover that one of its students dared to tweet an offending word during the middle of the night? Simple: Garrett High School’s computer system actively tracks the social media presence of its students. Because the student logged on to his account during school hours, the system was able to find and report the foul-mouthed tweet, leading to the expulsion.
Public school is all about respecting authority, even when a school administrator doesn’t have any authority over its students. They feel they can control what students do and say, even outside of school and school hours.
Also, what’s up with Yahoo carrying water for this authoritarian system by labeling school administrators as “superiors?” Teachers aren’t the “superiors” of students. They are fucking teachers with a joke of a degree and a certificate, not Einstein.
Going into these hearings there were a lot of people, particularly a lot of supporters, who believed this would be an easy case – that this court was very unlikely to strike down the individual mandate. But it is clear after these three days, that was just wishful thinking.
This is a really complicated, complex case. And it does appear, right now, anyway, that there is a majority willing to strike down not only the requirement that we all buy health insurance, but perhaps, the entire law. We’ll know for sure by the end of June.
One can only hope that the justices realize that forcing Americans to buy a government approved product under the guise of regulating commerce is a really bad fucking idea, and that allowing the law to stand would pave the way for some very nasty people to do some very nasty things.
Because our lawmakers have nothing better to do than worry about Apps on the App store. I mean, it’s not like congress hasn’t passed a budget in over 3 years and that our government is over $15,000,000,000,000 in debt or anything. We have Apps to investigate!
The NFL is penalizing the Saints for running a bounty system that paid players bounties of thousands of dollars to injure players on opposing teams. The league suspended the Saints’ head coach, defensive coordinator, and general manager; it also fined the team $500,000. Other teams reportedly had bounty systems as well.
Durbin, D-Ill., said the hearing, which has not yet been scheduled, will examine whether federal sports bribery laws should be expanded to include sports bounty programs. Representatives from professional football, hockey, basketball, and baseball—as well as the National Collegiate Athletic Association—will testify, he said in a news release.
God forbid that we have private organizations go about their business without a federal crime coming out of it. We’d be just like Somalia.
This is definitely the best way to convince the American people that your cause is a worthy one, and that your subscribers are members of society that are worthy of following. NBC New York:
Police said Occupy Wall Street protesters were captured on surveillance video dragging a large receptacle of human urine and feces to an open-air plaza at the corner of Nassau and Cedar streets last Wednesday evening, just before 8 p.m.
They then poured the waste down a set of stairs there, police said.
About 20 minutes later, one of the protesters entered a Chase ATM vestibule on Water Street and poured human waste inside there, police said.
Fun fact: Florida is one of 19 states where hitting kids who are participating mandatory public schooling with a paddle is completely legal in some districts. While some schools seek parental permission, those signatures—or lack thereof—may not hold much weight when a principal gets peeved[.]
Occupy Wall Street, largely forgotten over the last few months, aims to make a comeback from this winter’s hibernation with an ambitious plan: a crippling May Day “general strike” in the tradition of 1930s radicalism.
The grand promise is what one occupier, Brendan Burke, described to BuzzFeed as “a day without the 99%.” But in the city where the movement was born, it’s already suffering from what has emerged as one of Occupy’s signal weaknesses, the lack of ability or interest to make alliances with liberal institutions. Despite public solidarity, there’s little relationship between the Occupy movement and organized labor. And as a result, even the most progressive New York labor leaders say their members will not participate in the May 1 strike.
Let’s have progress by trying tactics that were used 80 years ago! Let’s rebuild our economy by sitting home and doing nothing!
I know how I plan to spend my May Day. Completely opposite of what the Occupy May Day calls for, I’ll be sure to go and do some banking, shopping, do some chores, my wife will go to work, and my children will go to their private school.
Of course it is tragic that some innocent victims and authentic liberal democrats are caught in the carnage. It is not our burden, however, to prevent that or to become enmeshed in other countries’ civil wars – not when there is no vital American interest in one side’s prevailing over the other. It is certainly not in the vital interests of a country weary of war, out of patience with Muslim madness, and $15 trillion in debt to further insinuate itself so that anti-American dictators can be replaced by anti-American Islamists.
It’s a pity that they can’t both lose. But if they have to savage someone, better each other than us.
Simply put, we have very little substantive control over what happens AFTER the bombs stop. Iraq is still war-torn despite our having significant sway over their political process for the last 8 years. Afghanistan will still be a mess when we leave and will be no less hostile towards America (and no closer to joining the modern world). Libya was transformed from a place where there was one despot who liked things his way, to many of them, some of which who are even more brutal than Ghadaffi and which are sympathetic to Islamic extremism as a form of government. We have come in, fucked all manner of things up, and left these 3rd world shit holes in worse shape than we found them, or at least places that are no less hostile to America. The key is to LEAVE PEOPLE THE FUCK ALONE TO SETTLE THEIR OWN FUCKING PROBLEMS. It really is that simple.
Cubans hate Puerto Ricans, who look down on his island neighbor Dominicans who have absolutely nothing in common with Uruguayans which readily look down on their landlocked neighbor Paraguayans who have no contact with Guatemalans who strive desperately to not be mistaken as Nicaraguan who has probably never met any Argentinians who see themselves as superior to all other hispanics. And none of those give the slightest shit about Mexicans and their immigration woes here in the US.
To collectivists, individuals are a non-entity. Only group identities matter, which is why institutions like The New York Times insist that there is such thing as the “hispanic vote”, treating all hispanics, despite the fact that these various peoples share little in common other than language (which greatly varies from culture to culture), as if they are a monolithic voting bloc. And it’s the primary reason why they are irrelevant.
Clarke said he intends to work with other members of Detroit’s delegation in Congress and expects broad support from Democrats. He pointed to support for his Detroit Jobs Trust Fund Act, introduced last year, among Democrats and some Republicans, including Rep. Candice Miller. The bill would allow Detroit to retain federal income tax paid by its residents, and had drawn 31 cosponsors as of December.
Detroit is a city that has been strangled because of decades worth of progressive policy. Redistribution programs and compulsory union membership have sucked every bit of financial life from the city, making various areas virtual ghost towns ridden with crime. And when push comes to shove, in a desire to avoid having the city taken over by outside decision-makers the progressive leadership which represents Detroit calls for the residents of Detroit to be able to keep their own money local rather than sending it off for multiple skim jobs by various government bureaucracies at both the federal and state level before being returned to the residents of Detroit to use for their own welfare. It’s funny how that works, huh?1
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1. Especially since progressives will take all of the credit while libertarian policy will be continued to be shunned if it is named such.
Is now a good time to finally pull out of that third world shit hole that’s still in the middle ages known to us as Afghanistan yet? Just imagine if it were us bing affected by the actions of foreign soldiers.
Anyone — a local teenager, a traveling businessman, a married mother of four, an illegal immigrant, even a student at a Jesuit university — can walk into my neighborhood CVS any time, day or night, and, for less than $30, buy a 36-count “value pack” of Trojan condoms.
That’s enough to last most Americans at least three months, according to Kinsey Institute surveys. If you want more, you can buy out the store’s entire stock. There’s no limit, and you don’t need to see a doctor for permission and a prescription.
About Virginia Postrel
Contrary to widespread belief, there’s no good reason that oral contraceptives — a far more effective form of birth control — can’t be equally convenient.
Having the pill go OTC would be a win for everyone. The price will go down significantly. There will be no barrier to entry by having to go to an expensive, annual doctors visit to get a perfectly safe and effective product. Those organizations which take issue with contraceptives will not be forced to pay for them because they will be cheap and easily available at every pharmacy in America. The only sane policy for birth control pills is to take a route that is the quickest path to being available over the counter.
