STUCK IN STUPID GEAR

This has got to be the dumbest thing I've seen lately, and that's counting Olberman's rant about Bush the other day :

"California is suing the auto industry over tailpipe emissions, marking the first time a state has sought monetary damages for the impact of global warming by vehicles, The Associated Press said. Attorney General Bill Lockyer last Wednesday sued the six largest U.S. and Japanese automakers, claiming they have caused millions of dollars in damage by creating greenhouse gases, AP said.
Lockyer is suing on the theory that greenhouse gases are a "public nuisance" under both California and federal law, an argument similar to one being pursued in a case before the 2nd U.S. District Court of Appeals in New York, AP said. Vehicles are the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in California, AP said.
The lawsuit names Chrysler Motors Corp., General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., Toyota Motor North America Inc., American Honda Motor Co. and Nissan North America Inc., AP said."
- Light & Medium Truck report

The idea of a government entity suing a manufacturer for selling a legal product that consumers want is nothing new, though. Witness the Big Tobacco settlement of a few years ago, of which our own Heidi Heitkamp was a proud participant. Global warming is just the new grievance du jour. This stretches credulity to the breaking point, however. I hope for the sake of all society that some judge swats down the idiot lawyers that cooked this one up, in both New York and California. I won't hold my breath, though.
This brings to mind a situation of a few years back. Various police departments around the country sued Ford Motor Company over some defect in the Crown Victoria car- and then complained when Ford wouldn't sell them any more units the following year!
In a state like California- that is responsible for the phenomena of car culture as much as or more than Detroit and totally dependent on the automobile, what possible good can come of this? Should a lawsuit be won by the state, the most hopeful outcome might be simply a dramatic increase in the price of cars sold in California. the worst outcome would be a huge cutback in the number of cars sold there. And since California cars in many cases have different emission equipment than 49 state cars, consumers will not be able to simply buy their cars out of state.
Morons. Simply morons.

Thanks to Sean Gleason

You will notice I added a new feature to the right side of my blog- a left side! I perceive that I have been pegged as a right wingnut, so to give the balance and "fairness" so much desired in today's world, I added Sean Gleason's "Autorantic Virtual Moonbat Generator". If you tire of reading my sensical rant, just go to the A.V.M.G. and get a nonsensical one. Any resemblance to The Daily Kos is, I'm sure, intentional. Scroll down to see it.

If you want an A.V.M.G. yourself, click on the "ABOUT" button, go to his website, and be the first kid on your blog to get one. Thanks again, Sean!

That's all today, kids! Be safe!

Take my taxes- please!

I read in the Herald this morning Tax Commissioner Cory Fong's proposal to rebate (good a name as any for it) a portion of our property taxes. A total of $116 million to go back to the taxpayers of North Dakota. To put that in a real world way, a typical $120,000 house would see a credit of $217 a year against the tax bill, presumably each year until a large surplus no longer exists.

Now, at the risk of encouraging the liberals out there, I have to say this- that's hardly supper for our gang at Sanders. Less than $20 a month. I have more change in the ashtray of my truck. Can we instead just find a use for that money we've already sent to Bismarck?

Might I suggest an alternate use for that money? How about we fix the damn roads in this state? No one could make the argument we don't need it- city or rural. The roads and bridges in the rural areas could certainly use some repair. This beautiful city of ours has roads that are badly broken up. As Commissioner Fong says in his viewpoint article, we are experiencing an economic boom in our state. What booming economy can get along without infrastructure?

Now I know the same argument can be made in reverse- $116 million doesn't buy a lot of road repair, either. And we don't know how many years this will go on- my guess is not many. But instead of me going to the movies with the wife and spending my rebate once a month, I'd like to see the money spent on one of government's few legitimate purposes.

DILBERT'S WORLD OR WALMART'S?

I came across this on National Review's "The Corner" blog the other day. An excellent little posting by a fellow curmudgeon I look up to- John Derbyshire. He writes:

Brave New Wal-Mart [John Derbyshire]

"I have got way behind with email, am struggling to catch up. Had several emails about my saying that reading George Will's Wal-Mart column started a chain of thought that ended up at Brave New World. Several readers were baffled....

Well, if I go into too much detail here I shall get into trouble of the PC sort; but the main idea was, that any society ought to offer useful and productive lives to its epsilons i.e. to citizens over on the left-hand side of the Bell Curve. The postindustrial West has been depressingly bad at this. Our basic approach to our low-IQ fellow citizens has been "Let them eat cake." It's hard not to get the impression that we have been busily building a society of law-school elites, by law-school elites, and for law-school elites; the "Yale or jail" society. Wal-Mart, with its simplified, stripped-down training programs that concentrate on a few easily-mastered skills and disciplines, is a small reversal of this deplorable (to my mind) trend.
Whatever you think of the society imagined in Brave New World, at least there was a place for everyone in it, bright or dim. That is not the case with present-day Western society, except in pockets like Wal-Mart."

Good stuff, Derb. As my dear departed Dad used to say to me, "Son, we need ditch diggers in this world, too". It was his way of saying that if any of his kids didn't choose to go to college, well, that's OK. As long as a means of living is attained honestly, it is honorable, too.

To paraphrase a succesful businessman I know- A college degree doesn't necessarily mean you know anything useful in your field, it just means you were willing to sit still and be taught SOMETHING for at least four years. Sobering words , there. Of course, in the business world, that little piece of paper has come to mean a lot- enough that the merits of a long career of experience don't mean as much as they used to. Thus we get the Dilbert world we live in.

THE WHEELS ON THE BUS GO ROUND AND ROUND

Dakota Huseby posted a notice on her excellent, informative, well-written (wink wink) blog that the Great City of Grand Forks, led by Councilman Hal Gershman is looking into a collaboration with the students of that hallowed institution of drinking, er, learning, the University of Nord Akota. Said proposal is to look into the possibility of the City and the students sharing costs in extending bus service past the normal 6PM ending, to also run from 10PM until 2:30 AM Friday and Saturday nights.

The objective in this is apparently to enable students to get much drunker, much later than is possible now. No word on whether this was the conclusion of a scientific study, or just "a rilly cool idea", but according to the Dakota Student, did come about as a result of meetings between the student Senate and City Council.

Details regarding funding of the whole thing are still being fleshed out. Proposed is a $1 rider's fee to cover the estimated $275 extra it will cost to run the bus an additional 4 1/2 hours. Any shortcomings in funding after that will be split between the city and the student body. There is no word yet how this will sit with students already complaining about tuition costs, etc. who do not wish to participate in drinking downtown.

A point for Grand Forks taxpayers to consider is this: every mile that a bus spends hauling drunken students around is one less mile it can haul someone going to a job, the grocery store, music lessons, whatever. Buses have finite life spans, and are money eating monsters while they live. 6 tires at $300 a pop, brake jobs at around $1000, a motor now and then at $15000. Diesel at 3MPG and $2.50 a gallon- pretty soon you're talking real money.

The question can be asked, fairly, I believe-don't we spend enough, in terms of money and aggravation, to finish the job of raising someone else's kids when they come here to go to school?
Is it worth it to us to subsidize student drinking?



Update: Willie Nelson is rumoured to have tendered an offer to help with bussing....

GF City Beat moves

Congrats to Tu-Uyen Tran on making the move to his new site on Area Voices, City Beat v2.0. Go see him there at http://www.areavoices.com/gfhcitybeat/ and say hello.

I LOVE CEMENT TRUCKS

I was watching the cement trucks the other day backing up and unloading into one of those cement pumper trucks at a building site. Watching them, I thought to myself, "What a sign of progress and commerce". Now the sun didn't break through clouds and shine on me , and no heavenly choirs were singing as I pondered, but it was a good thought regardless, as thoughts go.

Everywhere you look around town, cement trucks are haulin' ass somewhere with a load of soon-to-be smooth fresh concrete for my feet to walk on. I saw one of those big Advance mixers lift the inside front tire going around a corner,even. Building going on everywhere. I wonder if a city's economic progress could be charted by cubic yards of concrete poured in any given year? Maybe Tu Uyen would know where to look for something like that.

Anyway- Strata, Porta-Mix, Concrete Inc- keep up the good work!