I love parsing newspaper editorials and there is no better
place than
Ohioans spend a great deal of their money at casinos in neighboring states, but
still retain enough hypocrisy to keep any revenue from gambling in
Ohio and the latest attempt by the Indians appears to be dead, but you have to
love rationale common sense of the DDN editorial staff in justifying a
Bush decision, which goes like this:
Because Americans drove the Shawnees out of Ohio more than a hundred years ago
and Ohioans vote, that justifies keeping the Indian Casinos out. I mean this
type of reasoning got the
into
and allows Americans to justify killing other people for their resources. So
how about this reasoning - Iraqis, Iranians and Saudi Arabians obviously do not
understand how to use the oil wisely and the US voted; so we are justified to
drive them out and take what is rightfully ours.
Our
view: Feds get it right about Indian casinos
So long as the law allowing for Indian casinos really does
result in a significant number of Indian casinos — so long as it's not a dead
letter — there's just something commonsensical about a regulation saying that a
casino's location ought to have some connection with a tribe's residence for
the last century. Let the big decisions about gambling in
I think it is funny that
and therefore Ohioans, is an Indian Word.
Nearly one in 10 Ohioans now receives food stamps, the highest number in the state's history.
Caseloads have almost doubled just since 2001, with 1.1 million residents now collecting benefits, according to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
Low wages, unemployment and the rising cost of groceries, gasoline and other necessities are to blame for financial hardships facing many Ohio families.
The officials, all contract workers, used their authorized computer network access to look up files within the department's consular affairs section, which processes and stores passport information, and read Mr. Obama's passport application and other records, in violation of department privacy rules, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports from California. “Foreclosure used to be a last resort, something that hard-pressed homeowners would scrimp and plead to avoid. But some are deliberately choosing foreclosure as an early option. ‘It’s throwing good money away after bad’ to pay an escalating mortgage on a home that’s plunging in value, said Army Sgt. 1st Class Nicklaus Skaggs of Vacaville. He and his wife, Tishara, stopped paying their mortgage in February.”
“They have no regrets about their decision. ‘I feel like the pressure has lifted off my shoulders; before I was trapped,’ said Nicklaus Skaggs. ‘In the long run, I think this is the best financial solution. I have to do what’s right for my family. I don’t care if someone judges me. I certainly wouldn’t put my family in a position to lose $150,000 if I can help it.’”
“A Discovery Bay man who asked not to be identified said he is ‘upside down’ on his house by about $260,000. Instead of bemoaning the situation, he plans to capitalize on it.”
"And heaven forbid we have any problems with refining or delivery," Keyton said. "Combine that kind of problem with high crude prices and a weak dollar, and prices could get a lot worse."
Prices have already passed the $4 mark at many stations nationwide. But Tom Kloza, publisher of the Oil Price Information Service, thinks slower demand growth will prevent the national average from rising that high. Rising fuel prices affect much more than what we pay at the pump. They also affect the cost of business and government.
Dan Teaford, operations director of Boomerang Trucking Inc., said the Riverside-based company is paying $3.81 per gallon for diesel fuel these days compared to $2.20 a year ago. The company, which has 15 trucks used to deliver goods to five states, must pass the rising costs of fuel on to customers.
Prophets of doom, nowadays, are not stoned to death, at least not usually. Demolishing ideas that we don't like is done in a rather subtler manner. The success of the smear campaign against the Limits To Growth ideas shows the power of propaganda and of urban legends in shaping the public perception of the world, exploiting our innate tendency of rejecting bad news. Because of these tendencies, the world has chosen to ignore the warning of impending collapse that came from the LTG study. In so doing, we have lost more than 30 years. Now, there are signs that we may be starting to heed the warning, but it may be too late and we may still be doing too little. Cassandra's curse may still be upon us.
We need to conserve energy. That’s the cheapest way to reduce carbon. Screw in the energy-saving lightbulbs, but that’s just the start. You have to blow in the new insulation—blow it in so thick that you can heat your home with a birthday candle. You have to plug in the new appliances—not the flat-screen TV, which uses way more power than the old set, but the new water-saving front-loading washer. And once you’ve got it plugged in, turn the dial so that you’re using cold water. The dryer? You don’t need a dryer—that’s the sun’s job.
We need to generate the power we use cleanly. Wind is the fastest growing source of electricity generation around the world—but it needs to grow much faster still. Solar panels are increasingly common—especially in Japan and Germany, which are richer in political will than they are in sunshine. Much of the technology is now available; we need innovation in financing and subsidizing more than we do in generating technology.
We need to change our habits—really, we need to change our sense of what we want from the world. Do we want enormous homes and enormous cars, all to ourselves? If we do, then we can’t deal with global warming. Do we want to keep eating food that travels 1,500 miles to reach our lips? Or can we take the bus or ride a bike to the farmers’ market? Does that sound romantic to you? Farmers’ markets are the fastest growing part of the American food economy; their heaviest users may be urban-dwelling immigrants, recently enough arrived from the rest of the world that they can remember what actual food tastes like. Which leads to the next necessity:
We need to stop insisting that we’ve figured out the best way on Earth to live. For one thing, if it’s wrecking the Earth then it’s probably not all that great. But even by measures of life satisfaction and happiness, the Europeans have us beat—and they manage it on half the energy use per capita. We need to be pointing the Indians and the Chinese hard in the direction of London, not Los Angeles; Barcelona, not Boston.
We need to conserve energy. That’s the cheapest way to reduce carbon. Screw in the energy-saving lightbulbs, but that’s just the start. You have to blow in the new insulation—blow it in so thick that you can heat your home with a birthday candle. You have to plug in the new appliances—not the flat-screen TV, which uses way more power than the old set, but the new water-saving front-loading washer. And once you’ve got it plugged in, turn the dial so that you’re using cold water. The dryer? You don’t need a dryer—that’s the sun’s job.
We need to generate the power we use cleanly. Wind is the fastest growing source of electricity generation around the world—but it needs to grow much faster still. Solar panels are increasingly common—especially in Japan and Germany, which are richer in political will than they are in sunshine. Much of the technology is now available; we need innovation in financing and subsidizing more than we do in generating technology.
We need to change our habits—really, we need to change our sense of what we want from the world. Do we want enormous homes and enormous cars, all to ourselves? If we do, then we can’t deal with global warming. Do we want to keep eating food that travels 1,500 miles to reach our lips? Or can we take the bus or ride a bike to the farmers’ market? Does that sound romantic to you? Farmers’ markets are the fastest growing part of the American food economy; their heaviest users may be urban-dwelling immigrants, recently enough arrived from the rest of the world that they can remember what actual food tastes like. Which leads to the next necessity:
We need to stop insisting that we’ve figured out the best way on Earth to live. For one thing, if it’s wrecking the Earth then it’s probably not all that great. But even by measures of life satisfaction and happiness, the Europeans have us beat—and they manage it on half the energy use per capita. We need to be pointing the Indians and the Chinese hard in the direction of London, not Los Angeles; Barcelona, not Boston.
The president-elect will quickly realize that the number one problem is not that Americans can't afford health care -- it's that they can't afford anything, because their income is evaporating in terms of both lost jobs and a dollar that is racing toward worthlessness. They'll be hard put to pay for food and gasoline, nevermind Grandma's emphysema treatments. They will be walking away from home ownership -- or yanked kicking and screaming by default-and-repo -- and any government scheme devised to abridge their mortgage contracts will only undermine basic contract law that has made mortgage lending a credible thing in the first place. And that too, of course, would redound straight to a real estate sector already in price free-fall, with no one willing or able to think about buying a house.
