Can they even get started for $91M?

This seems unnecessary:

Congress authorizes "downtown streetcar loop"

I can walk from one end of downtown to the other in about half an hour if I don't dawdle with my camera. But even on Friday nights, I can park sufficiently close to my destinations for less than Portland charged for two (I assume most people don't dine out and go to shows alone) all-day streetcar tickets. Usually for free, since I don't mind walking six blocks.... Why would anyone drive downtown and pay twice?

About 6% of Portlanders--they of smug self-congratulations about their eco-awareness--actually use the light rail and street car on a regular basis. And it goes well past their downtown into other parts of the city.

But, $91M? Seems like just enough to fund some "feasibility studies" done by political supporters.

I like this...

Jim Treacher:


(tagging a post "assholes" and "Democrats" seems really redundant lately.)

No wonder no one read it...

Randall Hoven at American Thinker went through the Communist Party USA's 2008 platform and found that the porkulus bill enacts half of their planks and gets another 47% started.

Nikita Khrushchev has to be feeling smug.

Kayne West, call the White House.

The economic stimulus signed by President Barack Obama will spread billions of dollars across the country to spruce up aging roads and bridges. But there's not a dime specifically dedicated to fixing leftover damage from Hurricane Katrina.

No, I don't I think we need to be throwing any more money down that particular hole. I just want to point out what complete lying hypocrites Democrats, race-baiters, and the media are.

Is someone dumping meth in the Capital water supply?

I applied for a job in Des Moines this morning--there's an airport in Des Moines, at least, and real pork tenderloin sammiches--and now I'm rethinking this whole "moving back to Iowa" thing. Apparently Iowans have gotten really stupid since I left.

The state senate wants to give Iowa's Electoral College votes to the "national winner"--whether or not that individual has the majority of the votes in Iowa.

It looks like a flat-out attempt to circumvent the U.S. Constitution:

"If states that represent a majority of electoral votes in the country pass this compact, we can get a national popular vote without Congress, without a constitutional amendment, without any of those folks," [Senate Majority Leader Michael Gronstal--who apparently has no party, or else the Register assumes anyone reading their paper from another part of the county automagically knows he's a Democrat] said.

Yeah, the organized fraud assures no one I vote for will ever win the state's electoral votes anyway, but at least there used to be a thin veneer of legitimacy about it. The state may not have gone to the guy the legal residents with U.S. citizenship wanted, but at least they had numbers to back it up.

We're doomed.

At Ace, check out what's lurking under the cute reassuring titles of Henry Reid's plans for the Senate.

I particularly loathe S.3, Homeowner Protection and Wall Street Accountability Act of 2009, which will assure I will never ever be able to afford a house. And S.5, Cleaner, Greener, and Smarter Act of 2009, has us all starving to death in the dark to Save Teh Planet from Global Warming.

And no one knows what's in S.4, Comprehensive Health Reform Act of 2009, but with a name like that it's gotta be bad.

Happy International Anti-Corruption Day!

You can't make this stuff up.

Victor Davis Hanson makes you laugh, or cry:

But as illegal and as unethical as that is, what exactly is the difference between the Illinois example, and doing something like: since you gave my party, my legal defense fund, my furniture account, my library account, and my wife's senate campaign fund well over an aggregate of $1 million, so also I give your felon ex-husband a presidential pardon?

I do hope someone brings that up during Hillary's confirmation hearing. It won't sway anyone's vote, but it'll be entertaining.

(That's not his real hair, is it?)

Gas taxes

This is interesting.

Gas prices soar, WI Gov Doyle seeks to raise state gas tax, claims it's not really a gas tax.

Gas prices soar, IN Gov Daniels refuses to suspend state gas tax as Democrats urge.

I don't really know how to analyze these, since I lack the economics background. I do note that gas in Indiana is taxed at 6% + $0.18/gal, so around $0.38/gallon at $3.40/gal, and the gas tax in WI is $0.33/gal regardless of price and expected to go up to around $0.40/gal. From a consumer standpoint, the flat-rate tax per gallon is much easier to not notice as prices fluctuate. And it seems counterproductive to "combatting high prices" to seek to limit the amount of gasoline a company brings into a state--something economists understood in the 18th century and Democrats can't figure out (or willfully ignore) today.

What I can analyze is that neither of these policies are really about "helping citizens." In Indiana, the Dems hate Daniels so they're toying with a visible small issue to make him look bad; in Wisconsin the Dems are exploiting the "ZOMG! Companies make profits and that's wrong!" fears and resentments of people who don't understand math and don't like people making more money than they do.

But I find the regional differences in strategy--more taxes! Less taxes!--interesting. Just like it interests me that an Indiana Democrat would probably be cast as a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal right-winger on either coast. :)