Probably. BUT NOT TODAY!
Archive for July, 2009
Will some team pick Michael Vick?
Friday, July 31st, 2009Battle of the Wilderness tour
Monday, July 27th, 2009
WAL MART is trying to build a Super Center on the outskirts of the WILDERNESS BATTLEFIELD PARK in Orange County. The site is across the road from Mc DONALDS AND SHEETZ, just West of 7-11. So what? right? WELL, it seems this is the area General Grant observed the battle from, and has always been in the park’s range of study, even though it is not in the park. I find it sad to drive through that area today. Homes have been built throughout the area. Commercial sites dot it here and there. It has changed drastically in my small memory of the area, so I can only imagine what it was like in 1864. My toon while extreme may not be so far fetched as to what someone may observe on the Battlefield tour in the very near future. You can reach a Wal Mart in 1/2 hour from this site going east or west. One would think a site up or down the road away from the battlefield would not be so difficult. Because, there is only one Wilderness Battlefield, and that site is where General Grant observed the begining of the end, his first combat with the Army of the Potomac against Robert E Lee. We have too many Wal Marts now. No wonder the Chinese are getting so rich.
NO PLACE TO GO!!!!!!!!!!
Saturday, July 25th, 2009
ATTACHED COLUMN BY JAMES BAYNE ARE YOU FEELING STIMULATED?
I do not know about you but I haven’t got that stimulated feeling yet. Oh sure I received my $500 economic stimulus check. Took that sucker right to the bank and deposited it into an account for my children to help them out when the tax bill for all of these government bail outs come due. Let me see now, the American public has been made responsible for $787 billion via an economic stimulus program that was going to solve many (not all) of the financial woes of the nation. Now those who predicted this program would turn things around are saying the American Public is lousing things up by increasing their savings when they should be spending like there was no tomorrow. Well I can almost guarantee that if the people in Washington do not quit piling up the national debt for us that there will be no tomorrow. Not very long ago the pundits were lamenting the fact that “We The People” were saving at a rate nearing zero (2007) and now that it has increased to nearly 7% we are the cause of the problem. I read where some idiot in Washington complained that “every dollar of savings comes out of consumption”. Maybe if the government decision makers would adopt a “save” mentality they wouldn’t be passing on this tax burden to this and future generations.
The projections that those folks in Washington were making on how the massive increases in the federal debt would be ameliorated by a turn around in revenue (without large tax increases) were based on increased employment in 2009 and beyond. Have you looked at the recent unemployment figures? The announced figures for current unemployment is 9.5% (the administration had predicted a peak of 8.0%) which is probably understated by 50% or more and is further misleading in that it does not account for people who are underemployed by working less than 40 hours per week. Since February, 2009 unemployment has increased by nearly 20% and is continuing to rise.
Where has the $787 Billion in the “first” stimulus program gone? Very little has gone to the needed effort on the nation’s infrastructure. Most reports indicate perhaps 10%—and that is where the opportunity for increased employment exists; as well as beginning a fix on the infrastructure before catastrophic failures commence. Instead billions have been awarded to financial institutions (whose horrendous business practices contributed mightily to the current problems) such as Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, etc., and AIG is at the trough again. Have you noticed that these mismanaged companies have returned to profitability again—it’s not too hard when you are using public moneys? And I thought the intent of bailing out these institutions was to increase the flow of money into the lending channels. I’ve also been following the latest coming out of Washington which is a proposed second economic stimulus program. Currently it is being run up the flagpole to see who salutes it. What a shame.
If we think we have it bad now with the talk of federal income tax increases (and do not be fooled that it will only apply to upper income brackets), cuts in Medicare (or increases in the premiums you pay), a new tax on health insurance benefits, etc. just wait a little bit when state and local governments raise our taxes to make up for the short falls in revenue resulting from unemployment and the extraordinary decline in real estate values. I saw an interesting statistic the other day which noted that 15% of our total economy is represented by the taxes from state and local authorities. As Colonel David Crockett said to fellow members of the Congress when he opposed a small government give away—“not yours to give”.
HOKIE SHMOKES!
Friday, July 24th, 2009
Might the HOKIE SWAGGER have had something to do with the massacre at Virginia Tech?
Obama sells health care errrr Insurance reform…err he’s selling something…
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009
Scout and I watched the President’s infomercial last night. We can’t understand his plan. CAN YOU? Scout said “it’s gots worms.”
Shuttle Economy
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009
Jeff Walker, Column, Star-Exponent
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
How big is a Trillion?
Trying to comprehend the size of the National Deficit
How big is a trillion?
How about 1,000,000,000,000 — 10 to the 12th power, or a thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand?
First of all, a confession: I cannot begin to comprehend a trillion of anything. My mind can barely accept a million of something. I just cannot begin to wrap my brain around the idea of a trillion.
Here’s one explanation of a trillion, courtesy of NASA’s now defunct NASA Glenn Learning Technologies Project (LTP). “In the U.S. , one trillion is written as the number “1″ followed by 12 zeros (1,000,000,000,000).” For example, using this equation (as noted on LTP) ( 1012 sec)/( 3.16 x 107 sec/yr), one trillion seconds of ordinary clock time equals 31,546 years.
To put it another way, according to a CNN commentator, if a person started spending a million dollars “every single day since Jesus was born, you still wouldn’t have spend a trillion dollars.”
For a more visual idea of a million versus a billion versus a trillion, the technology centered website Digital Inspiration describes a simple scenario. A person could easily fit $10,000 in their pocket, if it were made up of a bundle of $100 notes. Raise it to a million dollars and you could make it fit in a standard shopping bag (paper, I presume.) You could fit a billion dollars in $100 bills in a small room of your house (where it would not draw interest.)
“With this background in mind, 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) is 1000 times bigger than 1 billion and would therefore take up an entire football field,” states the Digital Inspiration article.
(To read the article yourself and see the visuals, go to http://www.labnol.org/internet/visualize-numbers-how-big-is-trillion-dollars/7814/)
I had to put the idea of a trillion into perspective after the news broke on Monday that the United States of America is now more than one trillion dollars in the hole. If you thought that I couldn’t fathom a trillion just as a number, you can bet that I am at a loss to comprehend deficit of a $1.1 trillion dollars.
The Associated Press news brief Monday night gave this five dollar explanation for the crisis: “The deficit has been propelled by the huge sum the government has spent to combat the recession and financial crisis, combined with a sharp decline in tax revenues. Paying for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is also a major factor.”
To me that sounds like the handiwork of two presidential administrations. I don’t really care about the blame. All I know is that the current president needs help to help us to whittle away at this titanic amount of debt.
What ever we’ve been doing in recent years, must not be working. We can’t afford a war abroad, and if we’re not careful, there’s going to be a war of sorts right here on our own soil. They say foreign buyers are nervous about our debt. What about those of us who are living here in the country that is a trillion dollars in the red? We’re nervous, too.
We’re nervous about jobs, services, prices, and the chance of recovery. And many of us are tired of the corporate big wigs and their big paychecks, wealthy people trying not to pay their way and too many people abusing the system so that you and I and others are footing the bill.
I can honestly tell you, I do not have the answers. I know that somewhere things have to change, or our financial system is going to implode on itself.
On the subject of how big is a trillion, National Public Radio made this comparison: $1 trillion would be enough money to buy about a 1,000 boxes of Girl Scout cookies for every person in the United States .
If only our country’s debt were as simple as eating some Caramel Delights or Thin Mints.
Leaders set the example. Ya, Right.
Monday, July 13th, 2009
GOVERNOR HOKY POKY (NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH GOVERNOR HANKEY PANKEY)
Sunday, July 12th, 2009
Civil war returns to Orange Co. Virginia
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
Probably the last time there was any big news out of Orange county, it involved the Civil War. It’s deja vu all over again.
Recently Wal Mart decided they should build a store on a portion of the Wilderness battlefield site. There is spotty development around the battlefield, and no combat took place on the proposed site. Still, preservationists want to maintain the site as part of the park. Recently, the Orange county administrator said that it would be in the county’s best interest to ask Wal Mart to pick another spot in the county. The Orange County board of supervisors decided in closed session to terminate the administrator. I grew up in Orange and every time I looked up at that Confederate Statue, I wondered about those men who fought and suffered to protect Orange in that terrible time. The Orange county supervisors see it a different way, I guess.
FUTUREGEN
Sunday, July 5th, 2009
ATTACHED COLUMN BY JAMES BAYNE.
FutureGen. Now isn’t that name a grabber. FutureGen—I expect to see Yul Brynner coming around the corner at any moment. FutureGen is the name of an alliance (the complete name is FutureGen Industrial Alliance) between the Department of Energy and private companies to demonstrate “carbon capture and storage at a commercial scale”. Now I find several things about this proposal to be quite intriguing. The program was initially proposed during the last administration and was strongly supported by the administration until the Alliance selected Mattoon, Illinois as the site over the other two proposed sites which were in Texas. After the selection of Mattoon, Illinois the plug was pulled on the effort in late 2007.
Fast forward to 2009 and we have a new administration with deep roots in Illinois so the Department of Energy has revived the program by announcing a plan to spend $1 Billion in economic stimulus funds to restart the effort, which is about half of what the projected full cost is estimated to run. Now get this—energy officials said that this does not mean that the plant will ultimately be built and that the ultimate decision will be made in early 2010. Can you believe that they will commit $1 Billion of the economic stimulus funds and not be committed to seeing the project through? And notice that the front half of the total estimated expenditure is the money that We The People are tagged for. I’d bet a dollar or two that if the selected site was in a state other than Illinois that it would not be on the front burner.
Another interesting point is that it was originally estimated that 90% of emissions (carbon dioxide) would be captured and they have now changed that to 60-90%. I’d suggest they spend a little less and come up with a better handle on probable results before undertaking a $1 Billion commitment. The last administration said that rising costs caused them to cancel the program for a large scale commercial plant and that they hoped to replace it with several smaller plants—yeah right. Now the Department of Energy says it hopes to move forward with both the commercial size and smaller size plants (do I detect that the camel has its head in the tent?). What is not given prominent exposure is that 2 of the 11 commercial members, American Electric Power and Southern Company have pulled out of the venture. The reason given was that they were concerned about the cost. American Electric Power said that there was no definitive message from the Department of Energy as to what the scope and scale of the project would be.
Senator Dick Durbin (D, Illinois) was irked by the withdrawal of those 2 members and stated according to the Daily Illini in Urbana, Illinois: “There is no project in the world of this magnitude and importance. None. And none where they can expect a billion dollars in taxpayer funds.” That is, I find, a remarkable statement. This smacks of an effort like the Superconducting Super Collider of the 1980’s which went belly up when costs escalated.
If I seem a bit cynical about this endeavor it comes from experience and having lived through similar program and site selection decisions and the rationale used in making them.
NOTE: THE STAR EXPONENT DID NOT PUBLISH THE CARTOON WITH THE ARTICLE.
Recent graduate "school of hard knocks", student of the world, class in session daily. Scout and I learn daily new tricks, develop bad habbits, and make new friends. Come and study with us!