Just once I'd like to see a number: tell me how many 1966 Electra 225s are on the road.

Because I don't buy that the number is so high that it constitutes a threat to anything. This reminds me of when the EPA forced importers of Ferraris, Lamborghinis and the like to install smog controls, because their V-12s would emit oil vapors for the first five minutes of operation and the nation would be overrun with 150-thousand-dollar cars that smoked, killing us all.

An old Caddy's gonna sit most of the time because 10 MPG costs money. Twenty miles a week to the store and to pick up a Social Security check isn't enough to force Dad to walk.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, there's the Turkey Run car show.

If you want to see your Insight humbled for capacity and efficiency, just go see what a 1965 Buick Wildcat with modern running gear will do: seat six, carry all their luggage, run 12's at the dragstrip and get about 24 MPG. Yeah, really chug-chug-chugging. Oh, it doesn't have airbags! That man's children are at risk, arrest him!

You already have the snitch line in California, where you can turn your neighbor in for having bad valve seals or an oil leak. Use that. Telling other people what they can do is a hobby in America nowadays.

You missed the point of the article. Your neighbor with the old car will not be better off when you take it from her.

Irwin and I share our last names - weird! Not many Stelzers around.

Hey, I did my part 20 years ago. I took an Electra 225 off the road, or rather an Electra 225 took my S-10 off the road and took itself out in the process.

We are SO fucked. You guys shoulda seen the cozy, kissy-face picture in today's paper of VP Biden and that snarky shit-for-brains Dodd here in CT. Almost made me lose my breakfast. Biden's here to promote some new roadwork thing or other, gonna "provide CT with a hundred jobs" yeah right. Those two need to take it to a hotel room and get it over with. Ack. This whole administration is just making me ill. x.x

http://www.connpost.com/ci_13489550?source=rv#

The picture is the 3rd one in the little box on the right, you have to click on the numbers to get to it. There's even a slide show, aren't you thrilled.

Don't blame me, I've been voting against that motherfucker since the 80s.

Our President and the Democratic party are dumb, or intentionally destructive. They could have had this analysis before enacting Cash for Clunkers. Maybe they did have it.

Let's hope that they are dumb. If they are smart, then they spent $1.4 billion on an ad campaign for their own benefit.

+ + + + +

Economics in One Lesson
by Henry Hazlitt, 1946, 1978
On Line

From the review by Aaron Jordan:
amazon.com/review/R1E1KF4ZX7I8XL/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

The one lesson is simply this: economic planning should take into account the effects of economic policies on all groups, not just some groups, and what those effects will be in the long run, not just the short run. That's it. That's the lesson.

Hazlitt examines the many variations of fallacious economic policies that benefit one group at the expense of others, or give short-term benefits at the expense of long-term costs.

I should have studied economics. Hazlitt's book is remarkably readable, coherent, and logical. It confirms that truth is understandable, whereas complicated obfuscation is usually the alarm bell that tips you off when people are trying to shaft you. This guy really knows his stuff.

We spend probably $200 bil a year in subsidizing rural areas with federal money.
You want less subsidies? You know where to start--rural America.

While you right-wingers are frothing at the mouth over the one-time, sunsetted, $3 billion clunkers program, don't forget the $8 billion we spend every year to support rural telephone service.
Funny, how right-wing nutjobs obsess about the clunkers, but not about the annual $8 bilion to rural telephone service. Hmmm..right-wing subsidies are good, but Obama subsidies are bad?
Could the right-wing really be saying, "Subsidies for right-wingers are good, but not for left-wingers?"

US subsidy fund for rural service reaches all-time high
By Fawn Johnson, Dow Jones Newswires
Tuesday 16 June 2009
New numbers from FCC mean consumers' phone bills will increase slightly on 1 July.
A subsidy fund designed to help phone carriers offer service in rural areas has mushroomed to an all-time high - 12.9% of interstate telecommunications revenue, up from 9.5% in the beginning of the year, the Federal Communications Commission announced Monday.

That means that consumers' phone bills will increase slightly on July 1, the start of the third quarter. The FCC's announcement forecasts a change that carriers will need to make to customers' phone bills effective on that date.

The subsidy fund is supported by a tax on the long-distance and regular phone-service bills paid by wireless, Internet and traditional phone customers. The amount is a separate line item dubbed "universal service," and it usually adds up to few dollars per month.

AT&T Inc. estimates that the increased customer payments from the first quarter to the third quarter of 2009 amount to roughly half a billion dollars.

Industry insiders say the universal-service-tax percentage is increasing because the number of traditional landline subscribers is falling dramatically as people switch to all wireless or Internet-based phone services, where contribution rates are lower.

Fewer phone bills overall means a higher-percentage subsidy tax for each one.

The universal-service fund pays out about $8 billion annually to phone companies that offer service in hard-to-reach areas.

AT&T and Verizon Communications Inc. receive the most subsidies from the fund, according to data the FCC sent to Capitol Hill last month. But that statistic is largely attributed to the two phone giants having the No. 1 and No. 2 positions in the industry. Verizon and AT&T customers also are the biggest payers into the fund.

Some smaller phone companies receive massive subsidies to recoup their costs, according to the FCC. For example, Beaver Creek Telephone Company, a tiny phone provider in Washington, received more than $16,000 per phone line in 2008.

instead of focusing full force on the economy

Count your blessings, however few and small. The more he focuses on the economy, the worse it's likely to get. Sort of like health care. . .

Apples to Oranges, i-hole.

One subsidy provides financial support to build and maintain infrastructure in places where the cost of doing so is inordinately high.

The other was political payback. Cash for Clunkers cost billions and only shifted forward sales that would have been made anyway (which if made on their own would not have cost the taxpayers a dime). What's more, it substantially reduced the size of a viable asset class, forcing lower income folks to pay more for a used car (or go deeper into debt to buy a new one).

As far as rural subsidies go, I know you'd like to let the rural infrastructure and subsidized family farms go to seed. You'd take joy at knowing all those Republican-voting farmers in Nebraska and Idaho and Kansas are unable to get to the polls due to their horses and buggies not being able to traverse the unpaved roads. You'd cackle with glee thinking of all those gun-toting right-wing farmers sitting in the dark without electricity and unable to listen to talk radio. But, i-hole, here's the rub; if that did become reality, you wouldn't be able to get your organic arugula.

And, i-hole, members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have made arguments about eliminating rural subsidies (both infrastructure-related funding and farm subsidies). And members on both sides of the aisle have voted against elminating them. It's not just a Republican thing.

Anything the government does ends up costing the citizens no matter how you spin it.

Conan, well spoken (as usual). Everything the government does costs money, i.e. taxpayer dollars, as David M. points out. The point is the validity of the spending--is it wasteful? A subjective matter, to be sure, but most would agree that infrastructure spending on rural America is FAR more beneficial to the nation as a whole (guess where our food comes from? hint: It's not the supermarket!) than some poorly thought-through and badly executed attempt to boost the auto industry while "going green." But, I suppose if you feel more self-righteous for doing your part to "save" the environment, than maybe it's not entirely wasted--that self-satisfied smugness has gotta be worth something...

That said, there is a huge amount of governement waste in ANY program...it's inherent in the red-tape factor. Which is why most Americans aren't enthused over the idea of the government controlling more and more of our economy; look at how it handles that over which it already has control.

Rural Americans, far from being rugged individualists, are the most subsidized weakling on the planet. Parasites, paid for by taxes levies on urban residents.
Urban areas would in fact depopulate without subsides.
Roads, water systems, electricty, airports, postal service, farms, phone, rails--all subsidized.
Jeez, 80 years after the Dust Bowl, and we cannot deep six the federal Department of Agriculture? Shouldn't those responsibilities be eliminated at best, or turned over to the states?
The Republican Party supports these economic weaklings every year with a couple hundred billion in waste and subsidy.
Conan is right about one thing: The rural subsidies are permanent, but the clunker was a one-time shot. Apples and (R-Party) orango-tangs.

The Republican Party supports these economic weaklings every year with a couple hundred billion in waste and subsidy.

Democrats vote in favor of these subsidies as well, i-hole. It's a bipartisan boondoggle.

Rural Americans, far from being rugged individualists, are the most subsidized weakling on the planet. Parasites, paid for by taxes levies on urban residents.

Fine. You grow your own food, cotton and wool for your clothing, and industrial additives for your manufacturing processes.

Roads, water systems, electricty, airports, postal service, farms, phone, rails--all subsidized.

You're right, dammit! They should get their crops to the city to feed their urban betters the old fashioned way, by horse and buggy!

And those yahoos don't need mail! Or phones! Or water for their crops! Or tractors! Or fuel for those tractors!

And good luck getting those products manufactured in one part of the country to another part of the country with no roads through rural America.

Urban areas would in fact depopulate without subsides.

Areas in which people are starving for lack of food tend to depopulate.

...80 years after the Dust Bowl, and we cannot deep six the federal Department of Agriculture? Shouldn't those responsibilities be eliminated at best, or turned over to the states?

A liberal state's righter? A liberal in favor of reducing the role of government? Can it be?

Your troll is showing.

The point is the validity of the spending....

Beth has it right. The question to be asked in any government action is, "What is the government's role and how is this spending furthering that role?"

Cash for Clunkers had no valid furtherance of the government's role and was in its entirety a waste of taxpayer money.

While building infrastructure in rural America is fraught with waste, it nonetheless provides a means of moving people and goods throughout the country, moving farm crops to market, and enabling fewer farmers to grow more crops (to support expanding urban populations).

Conan (the subsidized, weakling) Grammarian!
Actually, I favor elimination of all subsidies. I like free market outcomes, and the minimum amount of overseas nation building (trillion-dollar adventures).
That puts me at odds most especially with the modern-day R-Party. They are welfare pansies to the max.
If farmers want to sell their goods at urban markets, there is an answer: Toll roads. Pay-as-you-go baby.

Hey - nobody mentioned the obvious about the Cash for Clunkers program: people turned in their Chevies and Fords...

...and bought Toyotas, Hondas and Nissans.

Way to go!

The Rural America Is Hypocritical Because It Receives Federal Money argument doesn't really hold. It ignores factors such as legacy Federal investment in metropolitan regions, disproportionate state budget consumption by the same, Federal ownership of state lands, the costs of Federal mandates on rural states, regressive tax effects (e.g. gas taxes) etc..

Basically it's rooted in an analysis that's been specifically tailored to cast rural regions in a negative light.

i-smarter-than-thou: Actually, I favor elimination of all subsidies.

Including welfare, food stamps, AFDC, Medicaid, the earned income credit, etc.?

BTW, these are all Democrat creations. Or do they not count?

Actually, I favor elimination of all subsidies.

More power to ya. I'm not a big fan of them myself.

If farmers want to sell their goods at urban markets, there is an answer: Toll roads. Pay-as-you-go baby.

The farmers aren't selling their food in urban markets. Farmers sell to conglomerates who process and package the food and sell it to the supermarkets who sell it to urban America.

The food is moved from farm to factory to market on roads throughout rural America. As are the other agricultural products essential to modern life.

The toll roads idea works just as long as you understand that you will be paying for the tolls and higher transport costs in the form of higher prices for your food and other products that depend upon farm-grown materials.

...the modern-day R-Party...are welfare pansies to the max.

And all that corporate pork in the stimulus bill and in the healthcare bill was put there by the out-numbered and out-of-power Republicans?

====================

i-hole, you're an idiot.

I second that vote a-hole is an uber idiot. Rural America is America. I'll take a small town resident over city scum any day of the week. And if a-hole has ever lived on an actual farm or ranch, he would realize they are the hardest working people in this country. A-hole couldn't handle the rigors of that life so he just bad mouths it. What a hypocrite, again he know not of what he speaks.

Oh, and, i-hole, if you're opposed to subsidies in rural America, then you must, by definition, be opposed to the John Murtha Airport.

This rural boondoggle was proposed, financed, and continues to be subsidized by a...wait for it...Democrat. A Democrat known far and wide as "the king of pork." How he got that title away from Robert Byrd (another Democrat) is a mystery for the ages.

And this airport in the middle of nowhere continues to be funded by a Democratic Congress.

http://foolocracy.com/2009/04/john-murtha-airport-the-airport-to-nowhere/

Idiot.

> Toll roads. Pay-as-you-go baby.

Iholi wants to pay more for his food: OK by me.

Expletives aside, you guys do not truly understand free markets. Without subsidy, the true price of a commodity, good or service is known, and I can purchase accordingly. This leads to higher living standards for all. Econ 100-101.
Higher costs for produce? Probably--and much, much lower taxes and higher living standards, I will take the trade. (Is this a libertarian website, or a R-Party Welfare Queenies Unite web-blog-fest-athon?)

We have in the United States created a vast, and growing panopoly of welfare programs to sustain rural living. They are the usually the province of the Repubican Party, and they dwarf any urban subsidies. Yes, Murtha is part of the problem, as he is a rural subsidy-sucker too. The airports, the roads, the phones, the lectricty, the postal service--you name it, it it has the word "government" in it, it was paid for by urbanites.

BTW, go to the Tax Foundation website and research outlays by state, city or zip code, You will find this is true. The more rural the region, the greater the ratio of federal outlays to taxes. Urban areas pay more to the feds than they get back. Indeed, and urbanized state such as California is shortchanged by $50 bil and more annually.

If you live in a rural area, you should pray not to Mecca or St Peters or to the TV minister you are watching, but to Washington DC, and your welfare-loving rep, who does so well by you.

Look up the figs for Alaska, btw. Those noodleheads want to secede? Let 'em go...the lower 48 would save billions every year.

You guys need to read up on libertarianism and free markets. You seem confused, in the same way Sarah Palin or Terri Schiavo was confused. You are thinking with their brainwaves.

The Prezzy and veep nominations of the R-Party in 2012, btw.

Look up the figs for Alaska, btw. Those noodleheads want to secede? Let 'em go...the lower 48 would save billions every year.

You know not of what you post.

If you're going to argue for lower subsidies to rural states like Wyoming, Alaska, etc., then you'll have to also argue for the defederalization of their lands.

Presidents and Congress (usually at the urging of urban-based environmentalist organizations) think nothing of setting aside vast tracts of land in the Western states for national parks and wilderness preserves, limiting logging, mineral exploration, even settlement.

Then, the federal government has to reimburse the states for the maintenance of those lands as well as the lost money the state could have made had it had its own land available for its own use.

That's the biggest reason Alaska gets so much federal money...all the federalized land in the state. Want to drill the massive untapped reserves of oil in Alaska? You can't. Nor can the residents or government of Alaska. That's federal land.

Alaskans could make billions with oil drilling in the ANWR. Except, the federal government won't allow it. If the state of Alaska secedes, not only will the federal government save billions, Alaska will become one of the richest countries in the world.

Urban areas pay more to the feds than they get back.

A major part of subsidies to rural states is due to federalized land. Another big chunk is pure pork (Byrd, Murtha, farm subsidies for ungrown crops, etc.). But the rest of those subsidies make the giant metropolises possible.

Urban areas pay more than they get back in federal dollars, yes. But, the benefits from some of those subsidies are not being counted in your equations.

The ability to grow, process, and transport agricultural products in rural regions makes it possible for millions of people to live hundreds (even thousands) of miles from their food sources.

And federally-funded farming research has resulted in agricultural advances that have made it possible for one guy with modern farm equipment to grow more product on less acreage than a hundred guys could with older tractors. And modern agriculture is no longer at the mercy of seasons. Today, farmers eke out two or three growing seasons a year where only a generation ago farmers were lucky to get one.

Modern agriculture produces industrial solvents, additives, and products that are used in a wide range of manufacturing processes. And, if biofuelds ever become a practical reality, we'll need even more farm production and transport capacity to handle the demand (mostly from urban dwellers in need of heating oil, power generation, and transportation).

If, as you advocate, urbanites should pay the full actual price for the production and transport of agriculture-enabled products they use, the costs will be prohibitive. All but the riches urbanites will have to move out of their metropolitan centers and closer to their food supply; into more rural communities.

That diaspora of urbanites means not enough paying customers will be concentrated in place to make most arts and cultural endeavors financially viable. The New York arts scene might survive, but say good bye to the smaller middle American symphonies, playhouses, and museums. All those young urban artists and writers and musicians and actors will have to get real jobs.

You guys need to read up on libertarianism and free markets.

So do you. Put down The Probability Broach and read something with a basis in reality. Libertarian utopias are fantasies rest upon assumptions that do not work in the real world.

> Higher costs for produce?
> Probably--and much, much lower taxes
> and higher living standards, I will
> take the trade.

If paying more for things means a higher standard of living for you, you are really, really going to enjoy the next few years. The president you're so proud of has done lot to tighten things up for the next generations.

You guys are channeling Terri Schiavo's brainwaves.

This is from Reason magazine. Read it, and go home and wipe your pink, frilly panties clean.

"From 2004 to 2008, Taxpayers for Common Sense reports, Stevens had a hand in 891 Alaska-oriented earmarks worth $3.2 billion. That works out to about $4,800 per Alaskan, 18 times the national average. And earmarks represent just a fraction of federal spending in Alaska, which totaled $9 billion in 2006 alone.

According to the Tax Foundation, Alaska ranked first in federal spending per capita in 18 of the 25 years from 1981 through 2005. In 2005 Alaskans received $1.84 for every dollar they sent to Washington in taxes. Stevens, who was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee for a dozen years and until his indictment was the senior Republican on the defense appropriations subcommittee, has played such an important role in this northward redistribution of income that federal spending in Alaska is known as "Stevens money.""

Ted Stevens was a pork hustler. He wasn't quite in Byrd's or Murtha's league, but he was close. And he's been indicted for crooked dealings.

The federal government owns 69.1% of Alaska, more than any other state except Nevada (84.5%). In fact, the top ten states in terms of percentage of land federally owned are all in the West (and most of them would be considered rural).

http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/map-owns_the_west.jpg

Go home and wipe your own damned panties.

And, i-hole, the jokes about Terri Schiavo's brainwaves show a lack of maturity. You're not only an idiot, you're an ass.

No, Conan, he's a marginal thinker and a douchebag.

He should volunteer at the local gym to be punched in the face until he comes to his senses.

Calm down, guys... He's not from our country.

What, only American douchebags need correction?