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April 28, 2006

Breakfast: Breaking the oil monopoly, Lobbying Reform, Soldiers Screwed and more

  • The Sacremento Bee has a great piece up by Clifford May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies that pretty clearly states it's time to move away from petroleum. It's some common sense on energy that's really what we should be hearing from the politicos.

    News bulletin: The technology to run cars on alternative fuels already exists. The cost: less than $150 per vehicle. If the government would provide tax incentives - for manufacturers, motorists, maybe both - millions of Flexible Fuel Vehicles (FFV) could be on the roads in short order.

  • House Republican's managed to pass their weakened, watered down lobbying reform bill according to the AP via the Boston Globe. It did, at least, give D's a chance for a good quote

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    As Republican leaders huddled to try to salvage the bill, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., criticized their efforts. "This is a bill they thought they could get away with," Pelosi told a press conference. "It's a ruse, and I think they thought it was worth a try. But people are seeing through it, and their members are hearing from the public."





  • Soldiers, according to the Washington Post, are being hounded by the DoD and it's antiquated accounting systems for "everything from errors in paychecks to equipment left behind on the battlefield". The equipment was normally what was removed from them WHEN THEY WERE WOUNDED. That's right... these men and women have been wounded in battle and go on to recieve COLLECTION NOTICES.

    "We found that hundreds of separated battle-injured soldiers were pursued for collection of military debts incurred through no fault of their own," the report said.

    Granted they've known about this for a while... but it's only NOW coming to light. Can we PLEASE get this fixed?

  • Phillip Martin over at BOR has a good breakdown of the pros and cons of HB5, better known as 'Let's Fuck Smokers'. As a smoker (part time only now... usually there's alcohol involved, just as it is in most of my bad decisions) I really don't care if they jack up the tax $2.00. Still, it's a cheesy way for the state to raise money for an unspecified purpose. Wait... it's going to 'property tax relief'! Right! Just like money from the Lotto goes to the schools exclusively.

    • Posted by mcblogger at April 28, 2006 09:16 AM

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