Senseless in Seattle

The city officials in Seattle think they are righteous for not using salt to melt the ice on the roads? But what are the consequences? How many people in Seattle will be in accidents? Will ambulances be able to get to accidents quickly? What are the effects of sand? (not good according to one commentary)

Seattle refuses to use salt; roads "snow packed" by designTo hear the city's spin, Seattle's road crews are making "great progress" in clearing the ice-caked streets.
But it turns out "plowed streets" in Seattle actually means "snow-packed," as in there's snow and ice left on major arterials by design.
"We're trying to create a hard-packed surface," said Alex Wiggins, chief of staff for the Seattle Department of Transportation. "It doesn't look like anything you'd find in Chicago or New York."
The city's approach means crews clear the roads enough for all-wheel and four-wheel-drive vehicles, or those with front-wheel drive cars as long as they are using chains, Wiggins said.
The icy streets are the result of Seattle's refusal to use salt, an effective ice-buster used by the state Department of Transportation and cities accustomed to dealing with heavy winter snows.
"If we were using salt, you'd see patches of bare road because salt is very effective," Wiggins said. "We decided not to utilize salt because it's not a healthy addition to Puget Sound."
By ruling out salt and some of the chemicals routinely used by snowbound cities, Seattle has embraced a less-effective strategy for clearing roads, namely sand sprinkled on top of snowpack along major arterials, and a chemical de-icer that is effective when temperatures are below 32 degrees.
Seattle also equips its plows with rubber blades. That minimizes the damage to roads and manhole covers, but it doesn't scrape off the ice, Wiggins said.
That leaves many drivers, including Seattle police, pretty much on their own until nature does to the snow what the sand can't: melt it....
"We never use sand," said Ann Williams, spokeswoman for Denver's Department of Public Works. "Sand causes dust, and there's also water-quality issues where it goes into streets and into our rivers."

Bush Lacks Free Market Principles

Despite his statement to the contrary, Bush is not a free market guy. If he was, he'd realize it's the free markets that are causing the Big Three to lose in the market. Their costs are too high, mostly due to the unions.

There is a big difference between reluctantly supporting a failing banking system and supporting a failing manufacturer. Normal healthy companies rely on lines of credit. If these companies can't get loans to do business that can have bad effect on the economy.

Bush says sacrificed free-market principles to save economy

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US President George W. Bush said in an interview Tuesday he was forced to sacrifice free market principles to save the economy from "collapse."

"I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system," Bush told CNN television, saying he had made the decision "to make sure the economy doesn't collapse."

Bush's comments reflect an extraordinary departure from his longtime advocacy for an unfettered free market, as his administration has orchestrated unprecedented government intervention in the face of a dire financial crisis.

"I am sorry we're having to do it," Bush said.

But Bush said government action was necessary to ease the effects of the crisis, offering perhaps his most dire assessment yet of the country's economy.

Chicago Politics, Corrupt?

The governor of Illinois was arrested on corruption charges after FBI agents found him trying to get bribes to fill Obama's vacant Senate seat. The Chicago Tribune article, never mentions that the governor, Rod Blagojevich, is a Democrat. And people wonder why the newspapers are going bust?

Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, were arrested by FBI agents on federal corruption charges Tuesday morning.Blagojevich and Harris were arrested simultaneously at their homes at about 6:15 a.m., according to Frank Bochte of the FBI. Both were awakened in their residences and transported to FBI headquarters in Chicago.In one charge related to the appointment of a senator to replace Barack Obama, prosecutors allege that Blagojevich sought appointment for himseld as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the new Obama administration, or a lucrative job with a union, in exchange for appointing a union-preferred candidate.....

California is America's Canary on Obamaism

California's decline into financial misery wasn't hard to predict. It should serve as a proverbial canary in the mine for the rest of the country as to the direction that Obama has promise to take the country.

The theory goes that if you promise lots of goodies to people who don't pay much in taxes and pay for those goodies by taxing "really rich people that don't need the money" you will get elected. The few rich people can't outvote hordes of people looking for a free handout.

So the modus operandi has been:

• First demonize business as being mean and greedy. This allows you to tax them more.
• Heavily tax and overregulate business
• Force employers to pay for costs such as healthcare, daycare, and whatever you can dream.
• Heavily tax the "highest earners"
• Increase spending and welfare payments. Get voters addicted to free goodies

Unfortunately what happens is all the taxing and regulating makes it more expensive to do business in California. So they leave. It may be impractical to leave all at once, but it's a trickle. First it starts with relocating the headquarters to somewhere more business friendly (like Texas or Communist China). Then follows the rest of the business.

Politicans constantly think that companies and the "rich" have to suck up and pay the costs. When they leave, the states are left with the spending commitments, plus their revenue stream has dried up. This is the same path that Obama wants to take. Most glaring will be CO2 taxes (or Carbon offsets or Carbon cap and trade, or whatever other spin they give). If you think American industry is suffering now, wait until they raise their electricity prices.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a fiscal
emergency Monday and called lawmakers into a special session to address California's $11.2 billion deficit. The state's revenue gap is expected to hit $28 billion over the next 19 months without bold action. The emergency declaration authorizes the governor and lawmakers to change the existing budget within the next 45 days.
Without quick action, the state is likely to run out of cash in February.
Schwarzenegger and Democrats have proposed a combination of tax hikes and spending cuts, but Republican lawmakers are steadfast in their refusal to raise taxes.
Lawmakers failed to reach a compromise during the special session Schwarzenegger declared last month, pushing the problem to a new Legislature that was being sworn in Monday.