Budgets of City governments are tight everywhere. Where we live, they do fundraising donations for dog and cat food for the animal shelter. And folks don’t mind helping out.
487s waste their money on stuff that makes the ruling classes “feel good” but don’t make their city any better or financially better off. We post the 487 map, but there are usually some “tippers” that a place is a 487.
Taking down memorials is a common tipper, but there are many others. Look and see if they have a very expensive and underused mass transit program. A 487 has really evolved when they are funding a light rail line that is never used or never even completed!
A garbage recycling program is another good sign of 487 land, as is a fleet of government vehicles that are all green.
Quite frankly as long as they are only spending local money I don’t care how much they waste. We need to keep after our politicians to make sure they aren’t getting our federal tax dollars to fund this stuff.…
We're in the middle of Alabama, Nate's a tropical storm now. Will resume posting Monday!!…
Foreign language speakers in America have always existed. Heck we had translators to deal with the Indians. Immigrants to our country usually lived amongst those who spoke their native language. History shows all sorts of areas in cities where the historic culture prevailed. Growing up in Chicago, my grandparents were first generation immigrants from Germany.…
Anytime there is some heinous disaster, we fixate on wanting to find out why. In the case of airplane or train or vehicle disasters it makes sense in a way. If it’s a mechanical problem, we want the manufacturers to make such repairs so it doesn’t happen again.
In the case of human errors, the motives to figure out “why” it happens has many different motivations. When guns are used, the quest to discover the motivations are always political.
Those on the left always want to use the disaster to effect more fund raising from the rabid anti gun crowd. For them, a white male Republican who hates Democrats would be their ideal shooter.
Those on the right want the shooter to be a crazed and rabid anti American radical. It helps their fundraising too.
Both sides are incredibly confused right now. There aren’t enough facts out there to make any instant conclusions, and both sides know that in a couple of weeks the outrage will die down.
What happens if President Trump was right, and this guy was merely “evil”?…
Growing up in the 50s and 60s, we were all sold on the notion of nuclear powered energy. Cheap, clean and unlimited supplies of electricity. The idea boomed and for a while it seemed that the world loved the idea. In the US the love of nuclear power has dimmed, but in the rest of the world it continues to boom. There are 450 plants around the world, with more being built.
The US is trying to build more but the construction in the US in incredibly expensive and we no longer have a domestic manufacturer since the Toshiba/Westinghouse debacle.
From my perspective the challenge has always been handling the nuclear waste. Trillions of dollars have been spent on all sorts of schemes to reuse, recycle and even just store the stuff. We Americans were extorted out of $36 billion to fund the construction of the Yucca Mountain storage facility via our electric bills. This was supposed to be safe storage for 1 million years. The Obama administration stopped the potential use of the place after it was built.
Although this article is written by a Greenpeace activist, it’s a good overview of Japan’s challenges in storing waste. It explains why their last disaster could have been worse. With the closing of Yucca Mountain, waste continues to be stored in America’s power sites, perhaps waiting for a disaster.…
Foreign policy in this country has sadly fallen to the purview of the defense department, not the state department. This isn’t anything new, and has been this way since the end of the cold war. We conduct foreign policy at the end of a gun, sending drones, rockets and missiles at those who we disagree with.
Some of this is a function of the fact that we were the only super power left at the end of the cold war. We could bully countries with ease and there was little that they could do to stop us. We damaged and destroyed a lot of countries, but have little to show for it.
The tide shifted when we decided to mess with countries that had powerful allies that weren’t intimidated. Syria is the perfect example, where the Russians came to Syria’s aid.
We’re reaping the seeds that have been sown in decades of intimidation and it’s not working. North Korea presents a lot of issues. Ignoring how we got to this situation in North Korea is foolish, but going forward in the face of “lack of cooperation” in our process from China, Russia and South Korea is a disaster waiting to happen.
North Korea currently has no capability to hurt America. Sure they would like to, but they can't. China has consistently stated that if North Korea starts a war, they would be on our side, but if we started it, they would be on North Korea’s side.
Are the neos that crazy that they would want to start WWIII?…
The deep state needs terrorism as an enemy in order to maintain their ever-increasing deep state intelligence and military organizations. The notion that ISIS (for example) needs to be destroyed is ludicrous at best. For now ISIS keeps funding high and supports some of our “allies”. If not ISIS, they would “discover” a new organization.
ISIS in Syria has been a tool of Saudi Arabia from the beginning. Saudi Arabia has behind the insurgency in Syria and we went along (just like we support Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen). Russia’s support to its ally Syria put a wrench in our plans, but that hasn’t stopped us from continuing our meddling in Syria.
Oddly enough, Israel and Saudi Arabia have become “allies” of sorts in their attempted destruction of Syria. Saudi Arabia has recently indicated that they see the Syria operation as a failure and that they lost. Israel continues to strike in Syria.
By all accounts, the democratically elected government has put down the foreign insurgency and has secured virtually all of their country again. Saudi Arabia was recognized the failure of the insurgency. Most of the world recognizes that Syria with the help of the Russians have put down the insurgency. The US continues to send money, send arms, sacrifice Americans, and fight in Syria. Something is wrong in the US.…
Reading foreign country’s newspapers offer a perspective on what the leaders of the country think is important. I’ve long enjoyed reading the Tehran Times, not because I believe everything they say, but to try and get some perspective on what they think is important.
The articles and statements coming out over the Kurd independence movement is interesting. When Iran comes to Iraq’s aid on Kurdish independence, bells and whistles need to be going off in your head. Iraq and Iran are historically not good friends.
When no country except Israel has publicly endorsed the Kurdish movement, smart foreign policy folks need to take heed. Does anyone really think that the virtues of supporting the Kurds is worth the problems that Kurdish independence will cause to the region?
Kurdish independence might sound like a nice idea. Remember though that there is no “land” for them that they get to just become a country in. The land in question belongs to three countries. Three countries that don’t want an independent Kurdish state. This would be like if we somehow decided to support an independent Mexican state in the US with pieces of Texas. California, New Mexico and Arizona. …
As a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist, the notion of government support to private industry raises some big concerns. Certainly as it’s practiced now in America via crony capitalism it reeks of evilness. Solyndra, Tesla, GE and many others are examples of funding things that politicians think are “good ideas” is at best stupid, and at worst stealing from the American people.
But what if it is strategic interests? The best example right now is our virtually non-existent nuclear power industry. The last company that existed in America that built reactors is bankrupt. Westinghouse doesn’t build them anymore. For that matter, Westinghouse isn’t even owned by an American company.
Liberals in the US hate nuclear power, so they don’t really care that we don’t have that capability. Yet, most of the rest of the world does like nuclear power and in developing countries and eastern Europe in particular, new construction of nuclear power plants is booming.
China is taking huge advantage of our withdrawal of the playing field. Unlike the US, when China provides aid, they take equity positions and will have control of much of the electrical grid of eastern Europe.
We can never take politics out of the equation, but a serious discussion on strategic industries in needed now. Identify the industries and figure out a free market strategy to create economic incentives to nurture innovation and production.…
