Speaker of the House John Boehner has refused to bring a bill to the House floor to put to bed the ridiculous fiscal cliff mess. A bill that the President could have signed has not been put up for a vote. Boehner's own bill, the so-called "Plan B" bill, would have left tax rates where they are for people making less than $1 million, but Boehner was unable to get a "majority of the majority" to vote for it, so it never came to the floor. In other words, Boehner won't have the House vote on a bill unless he has a majority of Republicans willing to vote for it.
The bill would have passed, however, had it been put up for a vote, because it would have had the support of enough Democrats to put it over the top. More work would have had to be done, of course, as Democrats want a threshold of something along the lines of $250,000-$400,000... but a million would have been a good start. As a result of not even bringing the bill up for a vote, all Americans will have their taxes go up on January 1, the unemployed will be hurt, and there are a number of other things that may plunge the economy back into recession right when it's starting to recover. Christmas sales have already been lower than expected, and the possible plunge off the fiscal cliff is why.
This all because Boehner is more concerned about his career than about what could happen on January 1. See, he's up for a vote to continue as Speaker on January 3. Until then, he most likely won't do anything to avoid the fiscal cliff unless he gets political pressure to do so.
Yep, this is all about one man's career. If your paycheck is lower in January, this is why. Speaker Boehner needs to realize one important thing -- this is not about him and his career. This is about what's best for the continued recovery of the American economy.
By the way, Boehner, last time I looked you were Speaker of the entire House, not just the Republican side. You might want to remember that.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Friday, December 21, 2012
A Moment of Silence for Common Sense
The head of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, finally broke the group's silence today one week after the horrible shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. After earlier stating that the NRA would join in a constructive debate about gun control, he instead doubled down and proposed the stupidest, most nonsensical, idiotic idea about how to protect citizens of any age from being a victim in a mass shooting that he could possibly have come up with.
Mr. LaPierre actually suggested that the "only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." He actually said that. Here's his proposition: that every school in America hire an armed guard. No kidding. There's so much wrong with this moronic idea I don't hardly know how to begin. But let's just, for the sake of argument, think about what would have happened had there been an armed guard with a Glock or something in Sandy Hook Elementary. The shooter, Adam Lanza, would have just laughed before he shot and killed him. "I'll meet that Glock and raise you a Sig Sauer and a Bushmaster assault rifle, dude!" Yeah, that would be a great plan. Not to mention, where would the money be found to hire such guards, and who would be crazy (or suicidal) enough to take the job? What if the shooter has a bulletproof vest, making the guard's gun about as worthless as a marshmallow on a stick?
I don't happen to believe that children's lives are worth more than adults', but it does seem so much more sad that so many first-graders were killed in such a horrific way. But Mr. LaPierre, whose elevator apparently doesn't go all the way to the top, forgets one thing... children don't just go to school. They go to McDonald's, Chuck E. Cheese, the mall, the grocery store, the hair salon.... does Mr. LaPierre think every business in America should hire these armed guards? Does he really want to turn America into an armed camp? And who's to say that the people packing these guns know what they're doing or that they won't flip and do the same thing Adam Lanza did?
The deaths of these children and the adult teachers and administrators who died with them should lead us to some sane laws, starting with an assault weapons ban. If the assault weapons ban had still been in place and Nancy Lanza had been unable to legally buy that assault rifle, some of those people would be alive today. The coroner's report showed that all the children who died had been shot more than once.
I'm not completely against having a gun in your home for protection, and I wouldn't want a ban on hunting rifles either although I think killing animals and calling it "fun" and a "sport" is frankly sick. But we can make some common sense changes, such as banning the sale of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines, requiring a criminal background check for every weapon sale, and closing the gun show loophole.
There was a survey recently that said 70+% of NRA members wanted at least some of these changes. If they really feel this way, what they need to do is dump their NRA membership immediately. Don't give this organization, now run by people who are just, to use a technical term, fruitcakes, one more red cent. It's time for the NRA to become completely and totally irrelevant in America.
If your Congressman or Senator continues to follow the NRA's orders, you should vote him or her out of office as soon as possible or recall them immediately. We need to make sure our representatives make decisions about laws that make common sense, and not blindly follow an organization who has not only outlived its usefulness, but is led by extremists who can't even see what's so blindingly obvious to the rest of us.
Mr. LaPierre actually suggested that the "only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." He actually said that. Here's his proposition: that every school in America hire an armed guard. No kidding. There's so much wrong with this moronic idea I don't hardly know how to begin. But let's just, for the sake of argument, think about what would have happened had there been an armed guard with a Glock or something in Sandy Hook Elementary. The shooter, Adam Lanza, would have just laughed before he shot and killed him. "I'll meet that Glock and raise you a Sig Sauer and a Bushmaster assault rifle, dude!" Yeah, that would be a great plan. Not to mention, where would the money be found to hire such guards, and who would be crazy (or suicidal) enough to take the job? What if the shooter has a bulletproof vest, making the guard's gun about as worthless as a marshmallow on a stick?
I don't happen to believe that children's lives are worth more than adults', but it does seem so much more sad that so many first-graders were killed in such a horrific way. But Mr. LaPierre, whose elevator apparently doesn't go all the way to the top, forgets one thing... children don't just go to school. They go to McDonald's, Chuck E. Cheese, the mall, the grocery store, the hair salon.... does Mr. LaPierre think every business in America should hire these armed guards? Does he really want to turn America into an armed camp? And who's to say that the people packing these guns know what they're doing or that they won't flip and do the same thing Adam Lanza did?
The deaths of these children and the adult teachers and administrators who died with them should lead us to some sane laws, starting with an assault weapons ban. If the assault weapons ban had still been in place and Nancy Lanza had been unable to legally buy that assault rifle, some of those people would be alive today. The coroner's report showed that all the children who died had been shot more than once.
I'm not completely against having a gun in your home for protection, and I wouldn't want a ban on hunting rifles either although I think killing animals and calling it "fun" and a "sport" is frankly sick. But we can make some common sense changes, such as banning the sale of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines, requiring a criminal background check for every weapon sale, and closing the gun show loophole.
There was a survey recently that said 70+% of NRA members wanted at least some of these changes. If they really feel this way, what they need to do is dump their NRA membership immediately. Don't give this organization, now run by people who are just, to use a technical term, fruitcakes, one more red cent. It's time for the NRA to become completely and totally irrelevant in America.
If your Congressman or Senator continues to follow the NRA's orders, you should vote him or her out of office as soon as possible or recall them immediately. We need to make sure our representatives make decisions about laws that make common sense, and not blindly follow an organization who has not only outlived its usefulness, but is led by extremists who can't even see what's so blindingly obvious to the rest of us.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Hybrid Cars vs Non-Hybrid Cars - What Some Are Missing
When I hear people talk about hybrid cars vs. a "regular" car, quite frequently the major topic is naturally mpg. After all, that's the major reason why a lot of people want to buy a hybrid. There is a premium on hybrid cars, and they want to recoup that money over the lifetime of the vehicle. That's very understandable in this age of $3.25/gallon gas prices. But if your only comparison of whether or not you should buy a hybrid lies in the EPA mpg estimates, or even the cost of one versus the other, you're missing something pretty important, because guess what... if you could find a non-hybrid car that got the same mpg as a hybrid, you'd still be putting more pollutants into the air.
While hybrid cars are largely about how little gas you can buy, they're also about how little poisonous gases we output from our vehicles. If you think climate change isn't real, and that it isn't caused by all the bad stuff we humans put into our environment, then you can stop reading now because you won't get it. But if you believe, as the vast majority of the scientific community does, that climate change is an enormous threat to our health, our way of life, our food supply and our weather patterns, then read on.
Climate change isn't the only thing being affected by our air quality. I live in a city that has regular ozone warnings in the heat of the summer, and I am one of those people in the sensitive groups. Childhood asthma and other pollution-related diseases have exploded in recent years, I believe in large part due to air pollution. The numbers don't lie. You can read the statistics on the CDC website here.
So back to hybrids vs. non-hybrid cars. While it's certainly laudable for someone to buy a fuel-efficient non-hybrid vehicle, and it's definitely preferable to driving a gas hog, there's a myth out there that if you could find a regular car that gets the same mileage as a hybrid, there's an equal cost to the environment. Unfortunately, that's just not true.
There are several websites out there with calculators for determining the pollutants coming out of your tailpipe. I like the one on HybridCars.com here, because you can compare two cars side-by-side. Their calculator is what I will use for the below example.
Let's take a Chevrolet Cruze and compare it to a Toyota Prius. Not a fair fight, you say, as the Cruze is rated at 28 mpg and the Prius at 50. But I'll adjust for that in a second, hang in there. I chose the 1.4L (smaller) engine for the Cruze in this example. The Prius has a bigger 2.0L 4 cylinder. I then put in 10,000 miles driven every year, and $3.25 for the price of gas. As expected, the Cruze cost quite a bit more in annual gasoline expenses, but how about pollutants? Let's assume Chevrolet had found a way to make the Cruze some kind of non-hybrid wondercar and it was now rated at the same 50 mpg as the Prius. Currently it has 56% of the Prius' mpg rating (28 / 50 = 56%). So let's look at adjusting the Cruze's pollution output by this factor.
The carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) emissions of the Cruze for the year would be 6,729 lbs. vs. the Prius' 3,830. 3,830 / 6,729 = 56.9%, or roughly the same percentage as the mpg between the two. But how about other pollutants? Aha! Here's where the big differences lie. Carbon monoxide output for the Cruze is 37 lbs. vs. 14 for the Prius. 14 /37 is 37.8%, in other words, the Prius has 37.8% of the carbon monoxide output of the Cruze, which you will remember, gets 56% of the Prius' mpg rating. Nitrogen oxide and hydrocarbons are reduced as well. The Cruze clearly would produce more carbon monoxide than the Toyota even if Chevy waved a magic wand to get it to 50 mpg. One of the reasons for this is that the hybrids will shut down their gasoline engines at stoplights and most will cruise on the electric motor until reaching a certain speed.
While hybrid cars are largely about how little gas you can buy, they're also about how little poisonous gases we output from our vehicles. If you think climate change isn't real, and that it isn't caused by all the bad stuff we humans put into our environment, then you can stop reading now because you won't get it. But if you believe, as the vast majority of the scientific community does, that climate change is an enormous threat to our health, our way of life, our food supply and our weather patterns, then read on.
Climate change isn't the only thing being affected by our air quality. I live in a city that has regular ozone warnings in the heat of the summer, and I am one of those people in the sensitive groups. Childhood asthma and other pollution-related diseases have exploded in recent years, I believe in large part due to air pollution. The numbers don't lie. You can read the statistics on the CDC website here.
So back to hybrids vs. non-hybrid cars. While it's certainly laudable for someone to buy a fuel-efficient non-hybrid vehicle, and it's definitely preferable to driving a gas hog, there's a myth out there that if you could find a regular car that gets the same mileage as a hybrid, there's an equal cost to the environment. Unfortunately, that's just not true.
There are several websites out there with calculators for determining the pollutants coming out of your tailpipe. I like the one on HybridCars.com here, because you can compare two cars side-by-side. Their calculator is what I will use for the below example.
Let's take a Chevrolet Cruze and compare it to a Toyota Prius. Not a fair fight, you say, as the Cruze is rated at 28 mpg and the Prius at 50. But I'll adjust for that in a second, hang in there. I chose the 1.4L (smaller) engine for the Cruze in this example. The Prius has a bigger 2.0L 4 cylinder. I then put in 10,000 miles driven every year, and $3.25 for the price of gas. As expected, the Cruze cost quite a bit more in annual gasoline expenses, but how about pollutants? Let's assume Chevrolet had found a way to make the Cruze some kind of non-hybrid wondercar and it was now rated at the same 50 mpg as the Prius. Currently it has 56% of the Prius' mpg rating (28 / 50 = 56%). So let's look at adjusting the Cruze's pollution output by this factor.
The carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) emissions of the Cruze for the year would be 6,729 lbs. vs. the Prius' 3,830. 3,830 / 6,729 = 56.9%, or roughly the same percentage as the mpg between the two. But how about other pollutants? Aha! Here's where the big differences lie. Carbon monoxide output for the Cruze is 37 lbs. vs. 14 for the Prius. 14 /37 is 37.8%, in other words, the Prius has 37.8% of the carbon monoxide output of the Cruze, which you will remember, gets 56% of the Prius' mpg rating. Nitrogen oxide and hydrocarbons are reduced as well. The Cruze clearly would produce more carbon monoxide than the Toyota even if Chevy waved a magic wand to get it to 50 mpg. One of the reasons for this is that the hybrids will shut down their gasoline engines at stoplights and most will cruise on the electric motor until reaching a certain speed.
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