Vote For GreA+ Schools! YES!

Also check out the detailed Q&A on the project, and the referenda.

I commute in southern New Jersey on either I-295 (taxpayer-paid) or the New Jersey Turnpike (user-fee paid with some taxpayer subsidy) – they run roughly parallel along this stretch, so they “compete” for users. Because the NJTPK is tolled, while I-295 is not, you would think that a business using this route, say Bolt Bus or one of the Chinatown buses would use I-295 exclusively. In fact, while there is some of both, most of them appear to prefer the Turnpike. Why is that so? After all, they are already paying corporate tax, payroll tax, fuel tax, and apportioned highway taxes, but on TOP of that, to use the Turnpike, they ALSO have to pay a (presumably significant) TOLL. Why, exactly, IS that?

There, I Fixed It

On vacation this week in my former home state of Pennsylvania, I passed a billboard on I-95 south at 322 (undoubtedly paid for by the taxpayers of said state) touting the “Chairman’s Selection” by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. It slickly presented typical bucolic wine-business images of grapes, vines, barrels, etc, all to give the casual viewer the idea that a state wine monopoly is just great, look, we even have special selections of wines by our Chairman. I am sure this was by the merest coincidence a mile or three from the massive privately-owned wine store just across the border in Delaware, a state whose residents presumably live their lives bereft of the wonderful wine selections made by the chairman of their neighboring state’s liquor monopoly.

I couldn’t find the billboard online (Joe?) but in the spirit of trying to help all those folksy bureaucrats in Harrisburg to successfully put across their message, I corrected the PALCB’s “Chairman’s Selection” logo. You’re welcome!

Here’s one someone did earlier;

Wine Revolution For The People

(PHOTOS: PLCB, wikipedia, me, Empty Bottles)

The other from 2004 – Jessica Grassia of Toronto’s Golden Dogs sparkles on what could be the New Jersey State Anthem; “Construction Worker”

Philadelphia wants tow truck drivers to toe the line | WHYY News and Information | WHYY.

It's Not Just The Service, It's The Scenery

“…(T)he Federal Aviation Administration has proposed a mandatory $5 billion solution for Donovan and dozens of other Tinicum Township residents and businesses: Cut them a check and bulldoze the whole neighborhood. You want to stay? Too bad.”

Wait just a second here. The City of Philadelphia is broke, stone -cold busted, a wealth-destroyer without regional parallel. Until they get their spending and taxing under control, they have no moral authority to condemn a cardboard box, much less dozens of homes NOT EVEN IN THEIR JURISDICTION.

If we lived under a system that retained any justice, it would be Tinicum condemning the rump of airport property technically within the city’s administration, and kicking their asses back across the Schuylkill River.

But good luck doing that. As we have seen in the $20+ BILLION theft of Albert Barnes’ art collection, the judges that hover around the city like flies around a garbage can are owned by the politicians and Big Men of the City That Stabs You Back. They don’t need no stinking jurisdiction, they just take. “Here’s a dollar, now get lost”.

Meanwhile, the city continues to bleed residents, businesses, and, despite (or due to) carrying rapacious and malign taxation policies to a ridiculous extent, tax dollars. And the people that run it are still living in 1950.

(link courtesy of my wife)

via Tinicum residents airsick over plans to expand Philadelphia Airport | Philadelphia Daily News | 09/02/2010.

The Art of the Steal by Steven Woskow.

Still A Weapon Pork Barrel In Search Of A Mission

Or rather, what have our supposed representatives done? Among the thousands of anti-Constitutional things they have done this week, we highlight the following;

- passed a permanent extension of the USA PATRIOT Act

- passed a bill spending $30 billion on corrupt foreign dictatorships

- passed a bill combining various government and non-governmental aid workers into an “Active Response Corps“, an appalling name for a group that will subvert the democratic process in nations that we identify

- gave assent to a draft Iraqi constitution that guarantees no rights to anyone except to government and to the Mullahs (Iranian Mullahs)

Along with that, one of our local public servants, Rep Curt Weldon (R – Boeing Vertol) got orders placed by the government for the inherently unsafe, WAY over budget ($24 million $30 million $40 million $71 million $159 million EACH), and Marine-killing (30 so far and counting) V-22 Osprey Hybrid.

Quite a week, even for our normally diligent parasites!

(PHOTO: Coming To A Forward Operating Base Near You, if you are unfortunate enough to be in Iraq.)

Marine-Killing V-22 Osprey Aircraft Sent To Iraq

Time Magazine is reporting that the V-22 Osprey is being deployed to western Iraq for use by Marines there. The V-22, for those of you who haven’t been following the unfolding tragedy for as long as we have, is an aircraft that, much like one of the Transformers of movie fiction, can transform from a helicopter-like rotary-wing aircraft into a fixed wing aircraft, and back again. Except this transformer also turns into, with alarming frequency, a flaming pile of twisted metal splintered carbon fiber and dead Marines.

If you have even the slightest confidence in the wisdom or utility of this, please read here, or here, or, watch this clip from CBS, then tell us with a straight face that you believe this is a good idea.

If this is anybody’s notion of how we should be “supporting the troops” I would have sincere doubts as to that person’s real intentions.

One of the prime movers of the program since its inception was Congresscritter Curt Weldon (R, Boeing Vertol) representing the district in Southeastern PA we all grew up in, who horse-traded and threatened his colleagues in order to get part of the aircraft built in the Boeing facility that dominated his district (in his mind, anyway).

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the estimable congressman Weldon, here’s a shot of him participating in a Washington D.C. ceremony where the Reverend Sun Myung Moon had himself declared the Messiah, complete with an apparent Orthodox Rabbi blowing the Shofar to announce it to the assembled politicians (Moon, er, moonlights as publisher of the Washington Times, an erratically conservative newspaper and neocon propaganda outlet).

Weldon wrangled a key part of the project into the fading Boeing plant at the behest of the unions in exchange for political support. Even though the evil Weldon’s lengthy congressional career was subsequently slain by his own greed (a probe into shady deals involving his daughter’s “consulting company”) as well as reformer-cum-”Bizarro Weldon” Joe “Sleestak” Sestak, Weldon’s pet project V-22 Osprey, aka the flying pig that wouldn’t die, wouldn’t, well, die.

The “program”, as a protracted expenditure of pelf of this nature without successful production of a working piece of ordnance is called, was abandoned long ago by the Army, which was to have shared the cost of it with the much-smaller Marine Corps. Since that time, this flying deathtrap has grown to consume 90% of the Marines’ aircraft procurement budget. We are told that the helicopter it is replacing, the venerable CH-46 (not the also-deadly Hawker Harrier, as some erroneously report, is well past its service life and must be retired, along with 40+ years of experience, improvements, and development. So why then has the army continued to upgrade its fleet of CH-47 Chinooks (sister design to the Sea Knight) rather than replace them?