Proposition 16 Taxpayers Right to Vote

Originally uploaded by billspaced

I’m appalled at myself and fellow Californians for my having to write about this at all.

Prop 16, aka “Taxpayers Right to Vote,” is utter bullshit. It’s bullshit on so many levels.

As I have said before time and time again, any time you want to figure out the motives of a political party, a politician, or a “grass-roots” campaign, just follow the money: Where did it come from, who did it get passed through, and who ultimately got a piece of the American pie?

In this case, it’s PG&E who’s fronting all the money. It’s also PG&E who stands to suffer the most if Prop 16 fails.

That is to say, if local governments are allowed to conduct their business as they should.

Local governments have every right to try to harness their own energy. Just like they have the power to collect garbage, disburse water, and collect business licensing fees.

I have ZERO issues with a city or county government trying to cut out the middle man (PG&E in this case).

In fact, I applaud it.

If you give a shit about any of this, you’d go to your city council meetings and ensure that the city wasn’t stupidly spending your money.

But most of us don’t give enough of a shit to do something about it.

Well, except for this: Give us an easy way to tell folks how we feel. Up or down vote. That’s all we want.

To me, this kind of “vote for every issue” bullshit diminishes my vote. Why should I care about this crap?

“Taxpayers Right to Vote” implies that I don’t have a right to vote on whether a local government can use my money to pay to build an energy company.

However, didn’t I get a chance to vote for (or against) the very people who are undertaking the initiative to start this power producing entity in the first place?

Yeah, that’s right! It’s called “representative government.” Yeah, that’s where I vote for people who then take my interests into consideration when they make decisions! Right.

Just like how Congress is supposed to work.

Finally, the last piece of bullshit, or turd if you will, about this legislation is the image of the check. Look at it closely. It says PAY TO THE ORDER OF LOCAL POLITICIAN

It also says that the California Taxpayer is signing the check.

This is totally disingenuous crap!

First off, how are local politicians getting paid here? Kick backs, is that the implication?

As in, all $2.5 Million dollars (in this example) is flowing into the coffers of the elected city officials that you voted for? Is that it?

And that you, the “California Taxpayer,” are paying for it? Aren’t you now paying for it, but instead of to My Town, PG&E?

How is this any different?

Is this just a case of government cannot do this any better than private business? In fact, is it government cannot do anything right and private enterprise knows all?

Got some news for you. PG&E is more like a behemoth government entity than your city government.

They are taking your money left and right to provide spotty power at best with widely variable pricing that continues to rise even as “newer, more efficient” power supply processes are undertaken and/or discovered.

Prop 16 is so full of BS that I’m getting a terrible headache just smelling its stench.

Please, fellow Californians, don’t let PG&E shovel horseshit down your gullets. It’s not very tasty, not very fulfilling, and it’ll only cost you MORE money in the long run.

GRAND ISLE, La. – A cap collected some of the oil spewing out of the blown-out Gulf well, but black crude was still leaking into the sea, and officials said they won’t know until later Friday how much is being captured.

It’s the latest bid to contain — not plug — the nation’s worst spill. Even if the cap is successful, it will not collect all the oil coming out. But officials were cautiously optimistic that the device started working overnight.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government’s point man for the disaster, said a very rough estimate of current collection would be about 42,000 gallons a day, though he stressed he wasn’t certain.

President Barack Obama was set to visit the Louisiana coast Friday, his second trip in a week and the third since the disaster unfolded following an April 20 oil rig explosion. Eleven workers were killed.

Meanwhile, waves of gooey tar blobs were washing ashore on the white sand of the Florida Panhandle and nearby Alabama beaches Friday as a slick from the spill moved closer to shore.

Cap collecting Gulf oil, still unclear how much – Yahoo! News

Unfortunately, this “leak” may never be fully plugged. That is not a statement from any “official” sources but rather from me, the non-oil, non-fluid-dynamics expert.

I know a few things about plumbing (but I am NOT “Joe the Plumber” – that guy was a dumbass publicity seeker), though.

Have you ever tried to plug a leak by making 2 more holes in a pipe? Doesn’t work, let me tell ya!

And you can’t put a “cap” over it.

You CAN alleviate some of the pressure at the source of the leak by drilling holes ahead of the leak. But then you have to do 2 things: 1. Ensure that you capture the fluid coming out of the new holes (you’re potentially creating a bigger leak or more appropriately, bigger leaks) and 2. Plug the “original” leak now that fluid isn’t spewing out so heavily.

I don’t have any other solutions to this problem. I do know that it’s probably the perfect time to start a discussion about long-term oil dependence and how we’re going to avail ourselves of it.

May be a great time to re-think drilling so deep that humans cannot manually travel to the source of the leak to plug it. I know we’ve made tremendous technological advances in this area, but it’s clear to me that nobody really knows how to plug a gaping hole in a mile-deep well.

And if you can’t resolve the worst-case-scenario, then maybe you shouldn’t embark on the endeavor in the first place. There are calculated risks and then there are stupid risks.

The risk in this sort of thing is killing a massive, entire ecosystem and all that that means. For one, we probably haven’t even discovered some the animals and plants that have been destroyed forever by this disaster. And it will take decades to collect all the goo and remove it from the Gulf of Mexico.

It’s a sad, sad state we’re in. Sometimes, you just gotta leave well enough alone. Time to re-think deep ocean drilling.

This guy was dynamite. We’ll miss you, Junior.

SEATTLE (AP)—In his prime, Ken Griffey Jr.(notes) was considered the best player in baseball, on pace to rewrite the record books.

Injuries derailed his chance to become the home run king. His spot as one of the game’s all-time greats is without question.

Now relegated to part-time duty and with little pop left in that perfect swing, Griffey unexpectedly decided Wednesday night to retire after 22 mostly brilliant seasons.

Ken Griffey Jr. retiring at age 40 – MLB – Yahoo! Sports

Seriously, what if the hole can never be plugged and oil gushes from the hole a mile deep in the sea FOREVER?

PENSACOLA, Fla. – The BP oil slick drifted perilously close to the Florida Panhandle’s famous sugar-white beaches Wednesday as a risky gambit to contain the leak by shearing off the well pipe ran into trouble a mile under the sea when the diamond-tipped saw became stuck.

BP faces another setback; oil slick threatens Fla. – Yahoo! News

Figures…

AT&T just did away with its all-you-can-eat smartphone data plans — bad news for those who stream video on their iPhones all day, but potentially good news for the rest of us, given that the cheapest of the new capped plans goes for just $15 (rather than $30) a month. Also: AT&T is finally ready to offer iPhone tethering.

AT&T phases out unlimited data plans – Yahoo! News