All logic aside – who keeps the quarter?

So who gets to keep the quarter?

Diesel fuel and home heating oil are pretty much interchangeable. The same stuff, colored differently so that the tax man can easily check that some trucker isn’t screwing the government out of about 50 cents in state and federal highway excise taxes by using it to drive around and make deliveries.

Homeowners, on the other hand, can be seen at the diesel pump pouring 5 and10 gallons at a time into containers to take home for keeping warm. (Massachusetts has a tax refund form that can be used to claim a 21 cent a gallon refund for those who do that.)

So here’s the question. The price of home heating oil has climbed to within about 25 cents of the price at the pump for diesel. Since there is no highway tax for home heating, one might wonder why the price of home heating oil isn’t about 50 cents less than over-the-road diesel. Historically, that has always been the case.

Two hundred gallons of oil for keeping warm now costs more than $600, a hefty chunk of homeowners’ change and many heating oil companies are now refusing to deliver just 100 gallons at a time. They argue the cost of making the trip out to your house has risen and so they have raised the minimum delivery to 150 gallons.

The question is a simple one.

If there is no tax, then how can home heating oil dealers justify charging a retail price that seems to include an extra quarter?

So who is keeping the quarter?

A three-hour cruise

President Obama is one well travelled guy. Why, just the other day, he popped over to visit the troops and say thanks. That’s a noble cause and a good idea. But hey, what about Hallmark? The Post Office could use the business.

How much did his three-hour visit cost in the era of  the budget crisis, the deficit and unemployment?

Well, the White House doesn’t say, citing national security, etc.

But reporter Steven Thomma took a stab a few months ago.

The costs of the trips — borne by taxpayers — are difficult to measure, but they’re expensive. When (the president) uses the familiar blue-and-white reconfigured 747 as Air Force One, it costs $100,219 an hour to operate, according to the Air Force. And that’s just HIS plane.

13 hours over, three hours on the ground and 13 hours back? Do the math.

26 x $100,219 = 2.6 million dollars.  That’s a lot of unemployment checks.

Maybe Wiki ought to leak some of that?

Truth – No Varnish

They have really done it this time. WikiLeaks has published a new batch of some 250,000 pages of internal state department documents containing (perish the thought) unflattering staff comments about world leaders.

There’s other stuff in there that the government says will damage our global  security assets.

Well shucks. Stamp it CLASSIFIED and get on with it?

What’s wrong with the unvarnished truth for a change?

Obama has no clothes

The president has decided rather than just be impotent, he will talk tough about punishing BP for its oil leak. Keep the boot heel on the company’s neck, so to speak. Launch a criminal investigation. Ban drilling. Talk tough. That’s a colossal mistake.

When regulations fail in the face of bad regulators, bad regulators can only fix the blame on someone else and propose more regulations.

How about taking a higher road? Maybe the government can focus on doing everything possible to clean up the gulf and protect the shore lands. Make sure the oyster men and the fishermen and the tourism businesses get the help they need.

It’s no time for talking rough. It’s time for doing something that will minimize the damage. Otherwise our imperial president will been seen for what he is, just another politician who cannot even stem a leak in the real world.

Why pay the banks…?

Second only to the weight of government and its regulations, we are struggling under the weight of all that borrowed money.

When politicians want to fund a program or make one bigger, they can raise taxes – but it’s less painful to borrow the money from someplace. And borrow they have done – to the tune of $12 trillion.

The interest on the national debt this fiscal year is set to be $224,413,543,168.81. You could buy a lot of schoolbooks for that. Or policemen on the street, fix a few bridges or any one of a number of other things.

So rather than raise taxes, here’s a thought: Call the bankers. Tell them government needs to cut spending. Tell them government needs to reduce the vig on the loan.

What? The bankers would have to give up a few Mercedes to survive? Hey, one in every 10 people in this country are looking for work. Unemployment trust funds are scraping the bottom.

What would they do, start foreclosure proceedings on the White House? Not likely. They could get by with a bit less.

Let’s insist that this (reduced interest payments on the national debt) idea join all the others on the agenda for discussion.

Disingenuous eulogy…

The president asked whether a nation that relies on coal miners for much of its electricity should not do everything in its power to keep those men safe.

Now, he said, we are going to repair the mine safety inspection process to make sure of that.

The question he did not address or answer was why, when regulators had cited the Massey Energy mines for repeated safety violations, no one stepped up and dealt with the problems. Now, with 29 miners dead, we have a new priority — doing the job that should have been done right all along.

Sp we give speeches and set about to fix the problem? We have mine regulations. We have food safety regulations, we have building codes and traffic safety rules and more. And still bridges fall down from neglect and mines blow up – and people die.

Politicians bob along on this tide of failure, secure in the knowledge that what they do matters. It does, but not in the way they imagine.  They make speeches. Promise improvements after each disaster and move right along to the next issue. A few more tax dollars will do it, they say.

Is it any wonder that so great a proportion of Americans are simply disgusted. And there is still no evidence that anyone knows how to make this right.

But it is increasingly clear that the every increasing dead weight of our entitled government is not the solution.

Census Bureau report card — F…

The Census Bureau has been propping up the notion that the recession is ending by “creating” tens of thousands of new jobs. But after a week of paid training some census takers are finding that intermittent work is exactly that. A day here and a day there, Net Pay? $45 in a week.

The Census Bureau also didn’t seem to know that the post office won’t deliver to a street address if the resident receives mail at a post office box. That means those folks have to go find a census form to comply with the once in a decade census mandate.

That means that census enumerators will have to be hired to go visit all those homes and speak thousands of people who could have been reached by regular mail.

Many suspect that means hiring a whole new crop of census takers rather than capitalizing on those already hired who don’t have enough to do. That will make the monthly job creation numbers look better for another month or so.

How cynical has our government become?

Where food comes from…

In the US, food reportedly travels some 1500 miles and more from farm to table. Much of it, grapes, other fruits, fresh vegetables and the like, comes from South America it seems. Locavores worry about sustainability and suggest home grown produce in season.

In Europe this week, with thousands of flights canceled for fear of volcanic ash, shoppers are facing shortages of those fresh produce items that arrive daily from Africa by air freight. No one knows yet how much produce will wither and be discarded because air traffic in Europe has been interrupted for several days.

Rest assured that the Iceland Volcano will loom large in future for those who believe, with good reason, that far-away food truly does come with a degree of risk.

Barns, Banks, Horses and Doors…

Federal regulators knew Washington Mutual was slicing and dicing bad loans and reselling them. Thousands lost their homes to foreclosure as the bank melted down.

Federal mine regulators knew that coal mine in West Virginia had safety violations galore. Twenty-nine people died when the place blew up.

Now Congress has more things to “study” to find out what happened.

Have they heard the one about closing the barn door BEFORE the horses get out?

It’s way past time that someone started holding these idiots accountable. Fire them. Put them in jail. Our overblown system of government is crumbling and threatens to take the country down with it while agencies and employee groups wail about the terrible consequences of budget cuts that might, just might, shrink the size of this beast.

Consequences? Some might say keeping on the way we are going is already having consequences. Stop the bus. Some of us want to get off.

Stealing the Tea…

Faced with a failed economy and a governemnt that has finally grown so large that it is crumbling under its own weight, conservatives are creating a new political movement. The Tea Party has grown into national a force to be reckoned with – even if nobody really knows what it means.

Conservative Republicans are many things, but they know a good thing when they see it. Witness John McCain and Sara Palin hustling to get on the podium at the recent Tea Party national event.

The Tea Party argument seems simple: We’ve had enough, throw the bums out and start over.

The Republican argument is a little more twisted: Throw the Democrats out and put us back in office.

Um. How did we get here anyway? Nice try guys, but the original thesis was the right one. Democrats and Republicans alike built this tumble-down juggernaut that has been forclosing on homeowners and costing people their jobs. Sitting politicians keep bring in higher budgets, even when the rest of us are cutting back.

It will be a sad day indeed if the “experienced” politicians manage to take over the Tea Party with their argument in favor that “exprience counts.”

It does, but not for much these days.