$25 MILLION School construction bond referendum tomorrow in East Greenwich and Swedesboro-Woolwich. Polls open 7am – 9pm. Don’t forget to vote!
Vote For GreA+ Schools! YES!
Also check out the detailed Q&A on the project, and the referenda.
Archive for the 'commentary' Category
Sheldon Richman points out in The Freeman today that Elizabeth Warren, late of presidential advising, and snubbed for a prime sinecure is running for Senate from Massachussetts. Her ads mar all my Facebook pages, and as Sheldon points out, her entire schtick is that rich corporations benefitted from taxpayer largesse, so they should pay more, a lot more. Left out of this equation are the other 100 – 200 million taxpayers, and what THEY would rather have done with the money. But that’s life in the Left Lane, isn’t it? Full of sleight-of-hand and rhetorical tricks.
I commute in southern New Jersey on either I-295 (taxpayer-paid) or the New Jersey Turnpike (user-fee paid with some taxpayer subsidy) – they run roughly parallel along this stretch, so they “compete” for users. Because the NJTPK is tolled, while I-295 is not, you would think that a business using this route, say Bolt Bus or one of the Chinatown buses would use I-295 exclusively. In fact, while there is some of both, most of them appear to prefer the Turnpike. Why is that so? After all, they are already paying corporate tax, payroll tax, fuel tax, and apportioned highway taxes, but on TOP of that, to use the Turnpike, they ALSO have to pay a (presumably significant) TOLL. Why, exactly, IS that?
Is it, really?
Then let them try it, with no subsidies.
No monopoly distribution model.
No State PUC, NRC, or Department of Energy protection from competition.
No Price-Anderson Indemnification.
No carbon taxes.
No disposal subsidy.
No lawsuit protection or “tort reform”.
No EPA pollution “permits”.
No favorable tax treatment.
Build it on the market, or not at all.
Is Thorium the Biggest Energy Breakthrough Since Fire? Possibly. – Forbes.
19
Aug
When I Was Seven…
…I would have traded my left eye for a bike this cool;
LOOK at the friggin’ MAG WHEELS, for one thing. HOLY SH!T!
But if you go by the idiots that post reviews of stuff online, it’s a cheap piece of crap;
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090806100208AAUILrE
Is a 20″ Mongoose Rebel Freestyle Bike a good bmx bike?
“I was just wondering is this was a good bike because i have this bike and I want to start bmx. So yeah. And what are good brakes for this bike?
Please answer. Thanks “
Member since:
July 09, 2009
Total points:
856 (Level 2)
Best Answer - Chosen by Voters
“noo not good they suck if its from walmart or any other dept store so no it sucks its to heavy. a goodBMX bike costs like 900 and up get a haro only buy the bike at bike shops no where else”
Apparently, according to these geniuses, you have to spend $300 – $800 (and definitely NOT $130 at Wal*Mart) to get an acceptable bike for a SEVEN YEAR OLD.
SIGH.
I read this article on lewrockwell.com today, and was prompted to share my heartburn and reflux experiences;
I suffered from terrible reflux, and, eventually, ulcers. Here is what I discovered were my triggers, and why I think they affected me;
1) Colas and other sodas with phosphoric acid. I noticed that the large amounts of coke and pepsi I drank were associated with heartburn and reflux, but other sodas without phosphoric acid were not.
2) Cured pork products. I LOVE the taste of all the cured pork products, such as pork roll, bacon, scrapple, et al. All of them caused or exacerbated my symptoms. Convenience-store hot dogs are almost invariably pork, and would invariably cause reflux.
3) Lard in baked goods. I noticed that packaged baked goods containing lard (and probably trans fats too) gave me terrible hearburn.
4) Highly fatty meats. Philly cheese steaks and pork sandwiches were the next to go :o(
5) Coffee from a coffee truck. This one was a real mystery – I could not figure out why this gave me so much trouble, when coffee from home or a convenience store usually didn’t. I deduced that while the coffee makers in the convenience stores were likely cleaned frequently, the urns on the coffee trucks are difficult to clean, and so likely harbor heliobacter pylori, the bacterium that causes ulcers. (I still have yet to prove this theory, luckily I work in a laboratory that can help me).
6) Eating right before (or in) bed. Allowing time to digest the food and allowing acid production to subside decreased my symptoms tremendously.
7) Sleeping on my back. By switching to sleeping on my right side, my symptoms abated significantly.
8) Untreated ulcer symptoms. All of the above, plus a significant amount of personal and work stress eventually put me in the hospital.
9) Misdiagnosed ulcer symptoms. Major university hospital totally misdiagnosed my severe gut pain as appendicitis.One perfectly-pink appendix and 2 weeks later the symptoms returned.
10) After they returned, a visit to an old-school D.O. resulted in a prescription for prilosec, which along with avoiding all of my known triggers (and changing my work and personal situations) allowed my ulcer to heal.
And by mostly avoiding the triggers, I can even on occasion enjoy some of the forbidden foods (yum, scrapple!)
8 Foods that Cause Acid Reflux | Natural Health & Organic Living Blog.
I would love to study the safety culture of this plant – if it is even half as safe as the manager claims it is, we could learn a tremendous amount about what it takes to run a truly safe operation;
New York Manhole Covers, Forged Barefoot in India – New York Times;
“We can’t maintain the luxury of Europe and the United States, with all the boots and all that,” said Sunil Modi, director of Shakti Industries. He said, however, that the foundry never had accidents. He was concerned about the attention, afraid that contracts would be pulled and jobs lost…
India’s 1948 Factory Safety Act addresses cleanliness, ventilation, waste treatment, overtime pay and fresh drinking water, but the only protective gear it specifies is safety goggles.
Mr. Modi said that his factory followed basic safety regulations and that workers should not be barefoot. “It must have been a very hot day” when the photos were taken, he said…
…At the Shakti Industries foundry, “there are no accidents, never ever. Period,” Mr. Modi said. “By God’s will, it’s all fine.”
via New York Manhole Covers, Forged Barefoot in India – New York Times.
I happened to catch a bit of this on XM the other morning, and I was SHOCKED by the, er, ENTHUSIASM Gupta and his co-host showed toward the idea that getting to work on war-pulverized bodies was a good thing;
Proposed List Of Demands For Occupy Wall St Movement!
A guy named Lloyd J. Hart proposes a list of DEMANDS the Occupy Wall St. protestors might make, assuming they succeed at, well, I’m not exactly sure what they are trying to accomplish, though I sympathize with the impulse. The demands are listed here. Iam going to take the bait and critique each demand;
This is actually two or three demands, as far as I can tell. The first demand, a high, protectionist tarriff, has an easy answer – Mr. Smoot, meet Mr. Hawley ( from the US State Department website); “U.S. exports to Europe fell from $2,341 million in 1929 to $784 million in 1932. Overall, world trade declined by some 66% between 1929 and 1934.” Also a $20 minimum wage, which will have the immediate effect of rendering everyone whose marginal revenue product is less than $20 unemployed and unemployable forever, or at least as long as it takes for the stupidity of said law to become grotesquely apparent.
Actually, the only effect medical insurance would have in a completely free market for medical care is that people who have uncertainty about the likelihood of future major medical medical expenses purchase inexpensive catastrophic coverage, and the provider of said coverage makes a profit. Otherwise, everyone else enjoys cheap, freely-available healthcare, unburdened by the awful AMA and FDA.
Extends demand 1A to people who cannot or will not produce a marginal revenue product at all. As if subsidizing unemployment has ever done anything but create more of it.
Already done. You can get the very best college education imaginable completely free ,well, almost. You have to have a computer and an internet connection to access MIT’s entire curriculum for free, on line. Beats the hell out of spending $250,000, and six years at a shitty state school, drinking beer and hooking up, doesn’t it?
Already well underway. The rise in price of fossil fuels (when you tease out Fed inflation) is moving slowly and steadily upward. Or, at least it would be without massive government subsidies to fossil fuel industries such as pollution permits, tax policy, and direct military intervention. Nuclear power has an even worse government subsidy regime. And as for current alternative energy policies, they only serve to subsidize old tech, are economically dubious at best, or, as in the case of Solyndra, ethanol, and other boondoggles cross the line into criminality and fraud.
Again, mostly done. the Obama Stimulus spent, what, $750 billion on exactly that. And as you can see, all of our pressing infrastructure needs are completely resolved.
7a) Give all federal lands back to nature and allow anyone to homestead them. 7b) End the TVA and BPA, here and all other monstrous Federal Dam authorities. 7c) End Price-Anderson, The Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and all state Public Utility Commissions, and make the contractors who built them and the companies that run them fully liable for any damage to persons or property.
8a) Done, see the 13th amendment. 8b) Tried that, almost passed until women realized what a raw deal it was for them.
Easy enough. End the Drug War and the Welfare state, or at least put a time threshold on collecting benefits, say 5 years. Then an open border would be welfare-neutral. Small side-effect though – immigrants will work you out of a job, kinda neutralizes Demand 1A.
Not sure how this helps, when there is no real choice in US elections, but OK, I’ll give you that one.
11a) Forgiveness of sovereign debt – Well, finally a demand we wholeheartedly agree with! I didn’t consent to any politician running up a debt, I damn sure don’t want me, my children, or my great-great-great-great grandchildren held responsible to pay for Bush’s and Obama’s wars; 11b)Commercial loans already have a forgivenness provision, it’s called BANKRUPTCY; 11c) Ditto for individuals; 11d) I told you you can get a college education for free, why the hell did you take out crushing loans?; 11e) See 11a); 11f) Are you sh!tting me? Letting the BANKS out of their obligations? They have already been bailed out tho the tune of $TRILLIONS. You sound like a corporatist! I assume this was an oversight.
Tough to do, we do have a thing called the First Amendment.
DONE. Any worker can sign any paper at any time now. Oh, you mean then that an employer has to recognize said paper as a legal binding obligation on him under penalty of law! Um, that’s going to be difficult to do. There are a lot of unemployed people already who will not likely favor this idea once it becomes apparent that this will make unemployment worse.
A complete non-sequitur, but OK, let’s see how it pans out.
But come on, people, where is the radicalism? Where are the demands to End the Wars, End the Drug War, and End the Federal Reserve? Too busy grabbing socialist loot I guess.
That’s OK – Ron Paul has got you covered.