Month: September 2005

Schools fear ‘tax giveaway’:

“This is so complicated that a lot of people will not get it,” said Patrick Lanane, assistant superintendent and chief financial officer for the Lindbergh School District in St. Louis County.

“Be careful, be quick or you will miss one of the most important tax giveaways that will happen in a person’s lifetime,” Lanane said. He and others believe that some outstate school districts are getting far more state aid than they deserve.

Thank you, Mr. Lanane, for looking out for the interests of taxpayers. No, wait, pardon my while cynicism realism settles in: You’re not afraid that these other school districts are getting too much; you’re afraid that your district isn’t getting as much as you think it deserves.

But never fear, our government officials are on the case:

School and business leaders in the St. Louis region feel so strongly that they have begun a campaign to raise $100,000 to pay for studies of the accuracy of assessments in 10 counties, said Glenn Koenen, of the West County Chamber of Commerce. The studies would be completed early next year.

Raising that money to educate students? You forget the purpose of government, citizen, which is to get more money for government, even if it’s from a higher government and its gains are at the expense of other governments in outstate Missouri.

(Link submitted to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)

Look out, Crestwood: a private consultant hired by the city has told the city that it has to renovate a privately-owned mall or lose tax revenue. Of course, he couched it in waivers and wherefores, but what do you think the local government heard?

While he proposes redevelopment, Melaniphy [the consultant] doesn’t advise Crestwood on whether the city should use public funds for the project. That’s something the city and Westfield will have to iron out, he said.

“If financial assistance can be used to keep a Macy’s or a big anchor store, the board should at least listen and see if we can accommodate that,” Robinson [Crestwood’s Mayor] said.

Translation: The government should use tax dollars to ensure that it continues receiving tax dollars. Serve the citizens? No, modern government serves itself first.

Perhaps the striking Northwest mechanics should contemplate crawling back to their wife and begging her forgiveness:

David Pounds, a 22-year mechanic, said he was thinking of changing careers, maybe selling cars. He’s had job interviews, but hasn’t had any offers.

“People are reluctant to hire a guy on strike,” he said.

He has also had trouble finding a job that pays as much. Union mechanics made $70,000 a year on average. “The last company I interviewed with, the compensation was a joke,” Pounds said.

The last company he interviewed with was probably not relying on government handouts to remain almost solvent, but that’s unrelated, no doubt.

Nuke Reactors on Campuses Keep Low Profile:

For University of Missouri tailgaters, the name of the new parking lot down the hill from Memorial Stadium is little more than a curiosity: Reactor Field, a nod to the nearby nuclear research reactor.

The nation’s largest university-based reactor keeps an intentionally low local profile, despite its cutting-edge research into promising cancer drugs.

Nothing says “incognito” like naming a facility used by thousands of unknowledgeable, transient sports fans after the “low profile” nuclear reactor which is plainly visible from Providence (name of road redacted for security reasons).

New Orleans Begins Confiscating Firearms as Water Recedes:

Waters were receding across this flood-beaten city today as police officers began confiscating weapons, including legally registered firearms, from civilians in preparation for a mass forced evacuation of the residents still living here.

Confiscate weapons before a forced migration of peoples. Sounds familiar….

(Link seen on Instapundit.)

Katrina could cost 400,000 jobs: CBO:

The damage from Hurricane Katrina could include up to 400,000 lost jobs and slower U.S. growth, a congressional report said on Wednesday, as President George W. Bush sought $51.8 billion in fresh aid for the disaster zone.

If the Congressional Budget Office is so sure of the number, perhaps that’s the number the Federal government plans to lay off.

Otherwise, they’re just pulling smoke out of their arse.

So what?

Is it any coincidence he’s not a member of our national security or foreign policy team? No, I think it’s the lack of credentials.

Nothing is as comforting as the certainty of leaders. For example, we can cull the following list from the story entitled Roundabouts are coming – and traffic flow may never be the same:

• city officials say
• officials believe
• traffic engineers say
• “They are definitely gaining in popularity,” said Larry Hagen of the Center for Urban Transportation Research at the University of South Florida.
• The proliferation of roundabouts could do more than ease traffic congestion, some hope.
• proponents say
• some roundabout advocates hope
• “I’d like to see us go like France,” Russell said. “They’ve got about 25,000 now.”

But perhaps I too-easily mock leadership. After all, there’s some definitive certainty in the article:

Columbus Circle, built in New York City in 1904, is considered the country’s first traffic circle, and was followed by hundreds more, mostly in the northeast, Russell said. Now, in some parts of the northeast, transportation officials are working to get rid of the circles and replace them with signalized intersections or updated roundabouts.

“We’re currently initiating a program where we’re attempting to eliminate as many as possible,” said Brendan Gill, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Transportation. “Essentially, they’re antiquated. They’re not built to handle the volume of traffic we’re currently handling.”

But it’s hard to blur and soften the edges of those sentiments, wot?

Hillary Clinton: “This time, you won’t get away with only having been in office for eight months, Mr. President.”

With many blaming the growing scope of Katrina’s devastation on the Bush administration, Sen. Hillary Clinton called yesterday for a 9/11-style probe into how the federal government responded to the crisis.

“It has become increasingly evident that our nation was not prepared,” Clinton (D-N.Y.) said in a letter to Bush asking him to set up a “Katrina Commission.”

“The slow pace of relief efforts in the face of a mounting death toll … seems to confirm that our ability to respond to cataclysmic disasters has not been adequately addressed,” she said.

On the other hand, if she does become president, imagine the fun her opponents will have when conducting “non-partisan” commission-based and tax-wasting inquiries like the one she proposes here.

Brother Paranoia Shidoshi Ray Nagin saith:

“Today was a turning point, I think,” he said. “My philosophy is never get too high, never get too low. … I always try to keep my emotions in check and yesterday I kind of went off a little bit. I was worried about that, but it maybe worked out. I don’t know. If the CIA slips me something and next week you don’t see me, you’ll all know what happened.”

A marvel of paranoid thought which I admire.

Speaking of which, I haven’t posted much about Katrina, neither denigrating foolish government idiocy on one hand or grasping, needling mewling from dependent citizenry on the other hand. And if the CIA slips me something and next week you don’t see me you will all know what happened.

I will have gotten too busy doing my freaking job to find a blog entry form or a television camera.

(Although I’d seen this story all day, it was Baldilocks’s entry that I saw last before I couldn’t take it any more and had to post.)

Friends and family plan on the cellular phone? Hell, no.

If you and your spouse or you and your friends have contracts with different companies, you’ll also be on different networks. Ergo, you’ll have redundancy so that if one cellular network goes down, you’re not dependent upon it and can call for help if the second cellular network remains operational.