Category: News

We live next to an interstate highway, and the front yard is pretty loud; you need to speak up to be heard. However, I used to say that in 20 years, we wouldn’t hear that highway because the internal combustion engine would be out of style.

Fortunately, the government is working to save the endangered Noise Pollution:

Electric and hybrid vehicles may be better for the environment, but the California Legislature says they’re bad for the blind.

It has passed a bill to ensure that the vehicles make enough noise to be heard by visually impaired people about to cross a street.

Thanks, guys.

(Link seen at Porch Girl‘s.)

Government making life more expensive for us in today’s Kirkwood-Webster Journal.

UPDATE: The link above is stale, so here’s the article for your reading pleasure:

In 2007, Congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. If you heard about this bill at all, a televised news bit might have said that it would help end American dependence on foreign oil. Maybe you read about the bill in the newspaper’s political sports pages as a box score in the perpetual pennant race between the Republicans and Democrats. Somehow, as it often happens with 300 page omnibus bills, you probably missed some costs that Congress has passed onto us without our notice.

In 2012, instead of going into your local store and picking up four 100-watt incandescent bulbs for $1.00 or $1.50, you will spend $4.00 for a single compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulb, $16.00 for four. The Energy Independence and Security Act bans the common incandescent bulb. With that simple action, Congress effectively raises the price of a light bulb from $.25 to $4.00 or more for every light, lamp, and ceiling fan in your home. The cost of replacing the 53 bulbs scattered around my home will go from $13.25 to $212.00 or more.

To be accurate, the Energy Independence and Security Act doesn’t explicitly ban incandescent bulbs. It only bans bulbs that use as much electricity as incandescent bulbs and allows only bulbs that are as energy efficient as CFL bulbs. If Congress outlawed cars with MPG ratings of lower than 30, it wouldn’t explicitly outlaw SUVs, trucks, and luxury sedans, but that would be the result.

I don’t oppose CFL bulbs; as a matter of fact, I use a couple for exterior lights that are on for long periods of time. However, CFL bulbs have additional costs and risks over incandescent bulbs. Since they contain mercury, breaking them can lead to toxic spills and death. Disposal is problematic, as you shouldn’t throw them away. Instead you should recycle them, but not with your recycling bin. To be responsible, you have to look for somewhere to drop them off or to send them. Some people probably won’t be responsible, dumping CFL bulbs and their mercury into landfills. CFL bulbs promise long lives and energy savings over several years, but you’re supposed to leave them on for more than five minutes at a time or risk shortening that lifespan. I don’t leave bathroom lights on for five minutes every time or spend five minutes minimum in my store room. Each short visit reduces the longevity of a CFL bulb and its value over its incandescent counterparts.

Congress often passes laws that provide immeasurable and possibly negligible benefit for the environment. With many of them, the costs to us remain indirect and somewhat obscured since they don’t impact sale prices. In 1995, the National Energy Policy Act mandated that toilets could only use 1.6 gallons per flush instead of the 3 to 7 gallons used previously. While that saves water, it also can lead to more drain blockage and quicker corrosion in household pipes since the lower flow of water doesn’t carry waste or sediments away as effectively. The Energy Independence and Security Act mandates that new washing machines and dishwashers use less water per washing cycle which also means less water carrying away the dirt and food particles and, potentially, leaving clothes or dishes dirty. Congress is not alone in making costly rules for us. In July, the Environmental Protection Agency released an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that calls for emissions regulation on lawnmowers. Catalytic converters and other emissions equipment will make lawnmowers more expensive, will increase maintenance costs, and cause the more complex machines to break down more easily.

The federal government has put most of these regulations into effect without attracting much attention. Since we consumers don’t see the costs directly, we’ve let this pattern continue without asking or debating whether the rules most effectively protect the environment and whether the total costs of the laws or regulations outweigh the anticipated, and sometimes measurable, benefits. Hopefully the coming light bulb shock of 2012 will draw some attention to the practice and spur debate in addition to sticking us with higher costs and prices.

In a story about a home invasion of Noah Herron, running back for the Packers, the journalist gives in to cliche and renders a judgement on whether the bedroom is actually the right place for you to be:

No, there was no message in this, only the fact that anyone can be in the wrong place at the wrong time. For Herron, it was innocently enough in his own bedroom one May evening while two burglars ended up pushing Herron into a corner, giving him no option but to fight back for his own life.

Brothers and sisters, the bedroom in your own home is not the wrong place at the wrong time.

The absolute right place to be in this situation is where your home defense weapon is. Unfortunately for Herron, this ended up being a bedpost, but fortunately it was enough.

James Durbin gives perspective on what the AB-InBev merger means to St. Louis IT in a post entitled The Effect Of The Anheuser-Busch Merger On The St Louis Staffing Market. He takes it from a macro approach, but let me tell you what it means to you, the individual IT drone: There are going to be a lot of former AB contractors chasing a smaller number of IT jobs in St. Louis.

But never mind that, let’s talk about the real impact on the rest of us: The commercials are going to suck. I mean, I’m not a fan of Budweiser, having only drunk a single Bud Light in my lifetime and only as part of Mardi Gras in Soulard where that’s all that was available from Red, the bartender from the Venice Cafe who was moonlighting on some balcony in Soulard proper. My dislike of the product aside, the commercials were often funny. I mean, almost ten years later, I say, “Willie, it’s go time,” and that’s from a non-campaign spot:

I watch a lot of sports, and this means I watch a lot of Bud and Bud Light commercials.

Have you ever seen a funny European beer commercial? Ever? They’re all so earnest at best, at worst they creep me out. Dudes, I have nightmares about this one:

Forget the local economy tanking. This is really where it’s going to hurt.

Story‘s lead:

A Lebanon man has been arrested for sexually assaulting his neighbor after bounding her in a filthy camping trailer on Monday.

What’s next? Making hurdling a woman a sexual assault?

(Memo to the Post-Dispatch Journalists with English as a Second Language program: bound is the past tense of bind.)

Instapundit links to a story about falling oil prices:

Oil prices plunged to a three-month low Monday, briefly tumbling below $120 a barrel in another huge sell-off after Tropical Storm Edouard seemed less likely to disrupt oil and natural gas output in the Gulf of Mexico.

Brothers and sisters, this is why Congress must act now! It’s not important what action they take, whether it’s foolish rule against oil speculators or more sensible plans to allow off-shore drilling or oil exploration on public lands.

What is important is that our ruling political class realize that unless it acts, citizens might get the impression that market forces alone can cause declining gas prices, and that sometimes the rain falls without the dances of the rainmakers on the floors of the House and Senate.

Wellston police scuffle; guns drawn:

A brawl between the newly chosen city police chief and his ousted predecessor resulted in guns being drawn on Friday and the mayor requiring medical attention for trying to intercede, police said.

The new police chief was named about four days ago, said Pine Lawn Police Chief Rickey Collins, whose department is investigating at the request of the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney’s office.

The two men began pushing and shoving each other about 3 p.m in a meeting room inside Wellston’s City Hall. Collins said he did not know what they argued about, though he said the former police chief recently had been demoted to assistant chief.

Guns were pulled during the scuffle, but no shots were fired, Collins said.

Respect for law and order takes another hit.

Another month, another Critical Mass event includes beating a four wheeler, this time in Seattle:

According to Jamieson, as the Critical Mass group moved down the street, blocking traffic, some riders got in the way of the Subaru and prevented it from leaving. Some bikers sat on the car and were banging on it, he said.

“The driver was pretty fearful that he was about to be assaulted by the bicyclists,” Jamieson said.

The man tried to back up, but bumped into a biker. “This enraged the group,” Jamieson said.

Several of the bikers bashed up the Subaru, shattering the windshield and rear window, Jamieson said.

The driver tried to drive away, but hit another bicyclist, Jamieson said. Still, he drove about a block, to the corner of Aloha and 15th Avenue East, before the Critical Mass riders cornered the car again and started spitting on it and banging against it.

One bicyclist punched the driver through his open window, and another used a knife to slash the Subaru’s tires, Jamieson said.

The driver got out of his car, and was hit in the back of the head, opening a large gash.

Wow, just like San Fransisco.

You know, if they keep at it and this spreads, eventually cities will ban these events. More oppression for the poor, poor bike lovers everywhere, especially the leftist thugs who like any excuse to damage the straights with “cause.”

(Link seen on Ace of Spades HQ.)

In case you didn’t know it, Missouri is almost on par with the third world, or so this dynamic and purposefully frighteningly colored map would have you think.

What is food insecurity? Probably something less than distended bellies and dead children in the streets. But it’s a interpretive metric, so those who want more government money in programs designed to combat bad feelings will always have just cause to spend more money. Except, sometimes, I suspect that it’s just ’cause that they have.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch uses the AB-InBev merger as a springboard to launch a series of “damaging” fatuous questions at John McCain, whose wife owns an AB distributorship.

The head of the Washington Bureau “asks”:

John McCain’s Straight Talk Express is far less talkative when it comes to beer.

McCain’s campaign is unwilling to directly address questions flowing from InBev’s purchase of Anheuser-Busch Cos. in light of his wife, Cindy’s, ownership of a large Anheuser-Busch distributorship in Arizona, Hensley and Co.

— For more than 20 years as a legislator, McCain has abstained from taking positions or voting on measures related to alcohol. As president, would he act on beer-related legislation — or continue to abstain, in effect casting a veto?

— InBev does business in Cuba, designated by the United States as a state sponsor of terrorism. As a candidate, McCain has been tough on the Cuban government. Will his wife now sell the products of a company that does business in Cuba — or even expand her business to include InBev’s other products?

McCain’s campaign is unusually tight-lipped on those questions, and wouldn’t say whether the candidate’s wife plans to separate herself from Hensley.

The paper’s really making an effort here to springboard from a rather touchstone local issue into casting aspersions onto McCain’s ethics. Particularly creative is trying to cast his recusing himself from voting on things that would benefit him through his wife’s company and complaining about how a parent company would do business in Cuba. We’re really stretching here.

I mean, for crying out loud, Barack Obama drives a Chrysler 300, and DaimlerChrysler does business in Cuba. Shouldn’t Barack have rented a Ford? And what about his publisher’s parent company, guilty of using Nazi slave labor at one point? Will Barack abstain from signing legislation in favor of slavery or Nazis?

I mean, I’m just a crackpot backwater blog making sarcastic remarks about Obama here, but the story and the leading questions in the paper is from a “credible” periodical with a (declining) metropolitan audience.

Forget this story, Post-Dispatch. If you need to try to gig McCain based on a narrative of local concern, investigate why he’s tight-lipped about trading for a good middle reliever for the Cardinals. Sure, it’s not his job, but you can still blame him for with a couple of bullet points.

(Full disclosure: I am actually a citizen columnist for a sort of sister publication of the Post-Dispatch.)

When he agrees with the journalist’s point of view:

A rising number of uninsured patients are going without necessary care and are raising medical costs for those who have insurance coverage, according to a report released Tuesday by the Missouri Foundation for Health.

The report, “The Significance of Missouri’s Uninsured,” took several recent studies from health care think tanks and federal agencies, located data relevant to Missouri and added analysis. The report was prepared by the foundation’s Cover Missouri project, which began earlier this year.

“I think there is an increasing understanding among Missourians that we’re reaching crisis,” said Ryan Barker, a health policy analyst for the nonprofit foundation, which conducts health research and advocacy. “This is a problem not just of a few people but of almost 800,000 Missourians.

Spending money on health care for the poor? Not when there’s a study to conduct to bolster allocating tax money to a cause!

When it’s a special interest group that the paper likes, it’s not lobbying, it’s advocating, and the special interest group-funded study isn’t suspect, it’s news.

I know, it goes without saying. But I’ll say it anyway because it’s as important to make a mystical chant out of the truth as it is the less-than-true that you want to stick in people’s heads.

Michael Williams endorses Steelman.

No doubt he’s getting a flurry of hits from the House of Representatives since he quotes the magic Google term “Kenny Hulshof” in his post. I hope you fellows there in Kenny’s office are doing official government work on those computers and not campaign work because I’m under the impression that’s naughty.

But Washington naughty doesn’t count, right?

When Obama says fix the economy, I expect he means neuter.

PS, Time-Warner: I sort of accidentally resubscribed to Fortune, and your love of promoting service to Mother Gaia and pimping politicians in a “business” magazine reminds me that when this year-for-ten-bucks subscription ends, I ought to go with Forbes.

The Post-Dispatch headline is Steelman lags behind Hulshof. What, in votes? No. Projected votes based on a few people reached by phone? No.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Kenny Hulshof rode a wave of endorsements to fundraising success this quarter, outpacing his primary opponent, Sarah Steelman, by more than a 4-1 ratio.

That is, he’s raised more money than she has. But! Citizen, money is a corrupting influence in politics, which is why (the rationale goes) it must be limited by the government.

But the papers, who cheerlead the limitations because they like all government intervention, especially the ones that increase their influence, report on this as though it’s indicative of anything more than who’s got the friends with the deepest pockets.

We could expect it to be Hulshof, the Washington, D.C., resident running for the job. I’m for Steelman, of course, because I think going to Washington, D.C., is sort of like a British man going to WWI. Dudes, I’m Mrs. Dalloway in this scenario, and I just want to have a little party here without damaged veterans of foreign wars or DC “politics” (self- and party-enrichment) ruining it.

What’s my point, other than I saw the movie of the Woolf novel? Oh, yeah, go Steelman.

St. Charles County cuts spending:

Less-than-expected sales tax receipts spurred County Executive Steve Ehlmann today to order county agencies to reduce spending by 8 percent and to eliminate discretionary travel.

Whoa. Must be a stop gap measure until they can figure out how to raise taxes, but still. It’s the sound of fiscal responsibility, if not the practice (but possibly the beginning of the practice).

Cruising bill hits a brick wall:

“I am all too aware of the problems facing the areas targeted by cruising. The cruisers, many of whom are not from St. Louis, are terrorizing our neighborhoods,” Reed said in a statement. “Something needs to be done, but pushing through flawed legislation, which in this bill only continues to erode civil liberties, is not the answer.”

Not passing a poor law just because they can? What sanity-flavored Kool Aid are those alderman drinking? I’d think $4 a gallon gas will curb cruising better than making it illegal, but I’m just thinking back to my young cruising days and shuddering at the thought of putting the whole week’s pay into the gas tank on Friday and Saturday nights, before the Kalt’s burgers and Jolt Cola.

Maybe there is room for some slight optimism in the country and its governance today.

By today, I mean “this morning.” Give me a couple hours and I’ll work myself out of it.

Well, now that many municipalities have eliminated the pit bull and rottweiler threats, perhaps they need to turn their attention to another nemesis of mankind, the miniature dachshund:

A dog chewed off an Alton woman’s big toe while she napped earlier this week.

How many innocent toes have to die before we remove the scourge of this dog breed from our cities? If it saves one toe, it’s worth any cost.

They were bred to bite toes and feet; look at them! They serve no other purpose. City fathers, I demand you round them up and gas them.

Some people think the power of licensing can prevent the deaths of children or tragedies of all sorts. What sort of license could have prevented this?

Adin was already dead, beaten by the defendant at a Motel 6 near the airport because he had wet his pants and was crying, Gabler admitted the next day to police and in court Wednesday.

Gabler wrapped the body in sheets, stuffed the corpse into a suitcase, and drove to Clyde Hamrick Elementary School, just west of Highway 21, near House Springs, where Gabler grew up.

Adin was the son of Min Choi of Maryland Heights. She was visiting relatives in New York and left Adin in Gabler’s care. The couple had been going together for about two years.

Larner said Gabler went on a heroin binge that week and took the drug both before and after Adin’s death.

• A license before dating a heroin user.
• A license before traveling to New York without your children.
• A license for dumping bodies.

Add your own tasteless comments if you need to. Point is, though, that people lie at the heart of many tragedies, whether accidental or willful, and any license regime will not prevent them.

It’s not often you see redevelopment plans like this in the 21st century:

The Stevens family, owners of Sterling Pen Company based in Webster Groves, plan a major renovation to the 1936 “Quonset hut” building that has been unoccupied for more than 15 years. The building would be turned into office space.

The exterior of the former brick warehouse, 8193 Big Bend, was modernized by the Stevens in the early 1990s, but the interior was never completed. The two-story building also has a basement.

The development proposal does not call for any new construction, but would create parking for the newly-renovated building by demolishing the building currently occupied by Earth Designs. That property is also owned by the Stevens family, as is the building and property leased by the adjoining Roger’s Produce, 625 E. Lockwood.

Jeff De Pew, owner of Earth Designs, said he has been working with the Stevens family who has “made sure I have a viable and comfortable option” for relocation of his business.

De Pew said he will move Earth Designs into a residential property at 624 Fair Oaks Ave., located directly behind his current location. The house is owned by the Stevens family, who plan a major renovation to the structure for use as a business. The home’s backyard will be converted into additional parking. All access to the new development will be off of Big Bend, and not the residential neighborhood to the north.

What, the development company owns all the properties itself and doesn’t need tax money to do the work?

Kudos to the Stevens family and Sterling Pen. I hope the city of Webster Groves doesn’t veto the plan simply because it doesn’t call for the government to exert undue influence.

Clayton company says it has built a better grill:

A Clayton entrepreneur is offering a solution for cooks who love to barbecue but find charcoal grills physically or environmentally distasteful.

Bryce Rutter, founder and chief executive of Metaphase Design Group Inc., set up a company to produce a novel grill — one that takes up less space and uses up to 75 percent fewer charcoal briquettes than traditional models.

Then Rutter went an environmental step further last month by acquiring the exclusive North American rights to import an all-natural charcoal made in the Philippines from coconut shells.

Guys, there’s this thing called knowing your target audience, and the people who worry about charcoal grills being environmentally distasteful don’t, you know, eat meat much less cook it over a flame. Their total food preparation experience involves leaving their lofts to go for sushi or Thai or Indian food.

But know that you’ve designed it, you’ll discover the flawed business premise.

Some big news here in St. Louis this weekend: Archbishop Burke, the recent and short-term leader of the Catholic church in St. Louis, was told to take a new position in Rome. The paper and pseudo-Catholics in the region rejoiced, calmly, and the paper helpfully illustrated the things it ran full color spreads on during Burke’s tenure in the story Burke’s tenure here was never dull:

• Archbishop Burke excommunicated a couple of women who started calling themselves Catholic priests and offering mass in a synagogue where they could get space. The paper runs their picture with the story about Burke to give a human face to his totalitarian enforcement of actual, you know, Catholic teaching and doctrine.
• Archbishop Burke reallocated assets of the church, including a Polish parish named for St. Stanislaus. The lay board of the church said no thanks and brought in a rogue priest to run the church. The lay board was shocked to then discover that a priest who would defy the archbishop would also start doing other non-Catholic things, such as recognizing women priests.
• Burke took actions in support of Catholic anti-abortion, anti-embryonic stem cell research teachings, shocking the “enlightened” society of St. Louis.

In other words, he followed the theological mandates of his church and its hierarchy.

However, some “Catholics” and the anti-churching amongst the journalistic set like to run pieces on the authoritarianism and the non-do-your-own-thing vibe of the Catholic church. They want to pick their beliefs and their attitudes from the salad bar of modern day life and still call themselves members of the group, no matter how few characteristics they share with the group. Or, I suppose, they want to tear down something greater than themselves to prove their own power.

You want the mass without the international heirarchy? Become a Lutheran. You want to control your own church and its funds? Join or start a storefront Baptist church. You want women ministers? Become a Unitarian or a Methodist or any of the other sects that have them. You want to worship by having sex with a priestess of Mother Gaia on Tuesday afternoons? Become governor of New York (or some other political office holder) and pay full price same as in town. But do not think that your inclinations are just as Catholic as John Paul II.

I’m not even Catholic, and the media stories offend me.