Jan 31, 2010
A point of clarification about my post the other day. What I meant to say was that people these days are more likely to continue to work in retirement, either in an actual paying job or in some volunteer capacity. As a group we value doing something that we find worthwhile.
Secondly, please ignore the weird spam that is showing up in the comments. I remove it when I find it. Of course don't follow any of the links. I don't want to enable comment security because it is inconvenient to commenters.
Have you ever thought how much more peaceful the world would be without oil as our main fuel? Much of the violence and war in the world today can be traced back to the pursuit of oil.
Hope and change for me would be engaging the talent and financial might of our country in the pursuit of other energy sources. How many jobs would result from a massive government effort to move us away from petroleum? But, too many of the movers and shakers within and outside of government make billions from our continued reliance on oil.
The National Council Defense Foundation estimate put the real cost of imported oil at $300B per year. This includes the cost of our defense of the Persian Gulf region.
For every $50 we spend on a barrel of imported oil, we spend an equal amount in hidden costs. That is about $1,000 for each and every American. We could do a lot with a thousand per person.
As the man said, "Follow the money".
Speaking of which, the Hooterville cops stopped 650 citizens at a police DUI roadblock last night on our South side. They nabbed a whopping 10 impaired drivers. But it made good theater. They also wrote 57 other tickets for things like lack of insurance or driver's license violations.
I'm surprised by how many folks see nothing wrong with the police stopping ordinary folks simply because they might be doing something wrong.
But I'm repeating myself, so I'll stop.
Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky
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7 comments:
I have often wondered how radically the world would change if all of a sudden we could run our cars on water or something common and relatively cheap we all have access to. Can you even imagine what that would do to the balance of power in the Middle East? Or the issue of who the US gives aid to? I'm convinced that oil plays a role in just about every key decision made in high places these days. Sad but true.
I've never understood why random traffic stops and checkpoints are legal. I wonder if anyone's ever taken a case to the Supreme Court challenging them??
I was driving in Newark not too long ago and got stopped at a random police roadblock. I prepared to hand over my license but when the cop saw me he just waved me through. I guess I wasn't black enough to warrant his attention.
I'm getting comment spam too. I'm going to reset my commenting settings so I have to approve the comments, I think.
Unfortunately the Court has ruled that these checkpoints are legal (Michigan Dept. of State Police v. Sitz, 1990).
I know, Merle. So right. We're in a quandary here. Water will be the next resource of concern. We already have a world water crisis on our hands, and water is necessary to make energy, and of course, energy is necessary to pump, move and clean the water. Oil and water! Maybe they do go together after all.
I remember back in the day Dr. M got a ticket at a checkpoint for not having an updated inspection sticker on his truck. He was silently challenging the necessity of the inspection (which was just a money-making dealio for NC, not a safety measure). However, after paying the ticket he took the truck for its inspection.
I sometimes randomly stop myself, but only once was I doing anything illegal.
That quote from Three Days of the Condor will probably never leave my sidebar.
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