Overstimulated?

We all know what happens when our elected officials and bureaucrats get hold of a giant pot of money, don't we?

That's right, out-of-control wasteful spending!

Whether it's a tax, a toll, a fee - you name it - they'll find a way to spend it in ways we never intended.

Check out this morning's Ft. Worth Star-Telegram article on how our transportation funds were spent. That's right, they were spent on everything but transportation!

One reason is that state legislators often require the Texas Department of Transportation to spend its enhancement dollars on pet projects by attaching last-minute "riders" to the department’s appropriation.

North Texans pay twice (or thrice):

Meanwhile, drivers in Dallas-Fort Worth, the nation’s fourth-most-congested metro area, are being asked to pay tolls on a growing number of roads and could face higher gas taxes in the coming years to make up for a shortfall of funds to expand highways.

Think it's just a Texas problem? Ask a senior citizen in New York state about the Thruway. Built in the 50's, it's the longest stretch of toll road in the nation and it was supposed to have become toll-free almost fifteen years ago. Instead, tolls continue to increase. Read more here.

So as this new toll hike takes effect, let's look at how they're spending the toll money.

For every toll dollar collected:

• 36 cents goes toward basic operating costs
• 49 cents goes toward thruway debt and capital
• 5 cents goes toward service areas and equipment

Your thruway dollars still support the canal, too. About 9 cents of every dollar supports the waterways.

Yeah, I wondered why it didn't add up.

That's about $80 million a year for a canal that most thruway drivers never use.

Canal directors say it's a better solution than simply taxing New York State residents to fund it.

I get it now.

Taxing New Yorkers might make the whole process more - as the double-talkers like to say - "transparent".

We can't have that, can we?

These folks are spending our money in ways we didn't approve. They're wasting our money in ways we find disgusting. Can you imagine what's happening with that stimulus money?

Check out The Mann Grant here.

It's just the tip of the iceberg...

Pass the Bark, Please

It's difficult to understand what our politicians are thinking. Is getting re-elected more important than our country's future?

Don't these fools understand that billions of people on our planet aren't going to play along?

Think you and I can make a difference when it comes to cleaning up the planet?

Think again!

We're no match for about five billion crazed carbon-burners. Read more here.
We don’t control the global supply of carbon.

Ten countries ruled by nasty people control 80 percent of the planet’s oil reserves—about 1 trillion barrels, currently worth about $40 trillion. If $40 trillion worth of gold were located where most of the oil is, one could only scoff at any suggestion that we might somehow persuade the nasty people to leave the wealth buried. They can lift most of their oil at a cost well under $10 a barrel. They will drill. They will pump. And they will find buyers. Oil is all they’ve got.

Poor countries all around the planet are sitting on a second, even bigger source of carbon—almost a trillion tons of cheap, easily accessible coal. They also control most of the planet’s third great carbon reservoir—the rain forests and soil. They will keep squeezing the carbon out of cheap coal, and cheap forest, and cheap soil, because that’s all they’ve got. Unless they can find something even cheaper. But they won’t—not any time in the foreseeable future.

We no longer control the demand for carbon, either. The 5 billion poor—the other 80 percent—are already the main problem, not us.

Climate change legislation could destroy the American way of life.

If environmental wackos have their way, farmers would do better by planting trees instead of corn. Read more here.

The legislation would give free emissions credits, known as offsets, to farmers and landowners who plant forests and adopt low-carbon farm and ranching practices. Farmers and ranchers could sell the credits to help major emitters of greenhouse gases comply with the legislation. That revenue would help the farmers deal with an expected rise in fuel and fertilizer costs.

Meanwhile, farmers around the world will be converting forests to farmland faster than we can do the opposite.

Allison Specht, an economist at the American Farm Bureau Federation, said other studies have largely confirmed the results of the EPA and Agriculture Department analysis.

"That's one of the realities of cap-and-trade legislation. The biggest bang for your buck for carbon credits is planting trees," she said.

I think I know who's behind all this. Could the tree-huggin' Breatharian lobby be pushing this?

Food? They don't need no stinkin' food!

An Insult to All 9/11 Victims

There are numerous 9/11 "Truthers" out there, but the one with the largest following seems to be Alex Jones.

By sounding authoritative while spouting nonsensical garbage, Jones has managed to gain quite a few followers and make an excellent living at their expense.

This snake oil salesman has found his calling:



Jones uses things we know to be true and twists them. He takes listeners on a disjointed journey full of illogical leaps.

The sad part? Our country is loaded with Truthers who are in lock-step with frauds like Jones.

Global Warming Alarmists...

...used CFC's as a springboard. It was a wise move. Like most, I believe that fluorocarbons were damaging to our atmosphere. If it was a scam, we bought it, hook, line, and sinker. Why, then, wouldn't we buy into the "we're cooking our planet and need to stop driving SUV's" movement, right?

The Global Warming vs. Next Ice Age debate seems different. Each side cherry picks data that "proves" their theory.

Read the latest here.

I said recently in my book The Climate Caper that most scientists simply cannot believe that their colleagues would deliberately oversell a scientific conclusion for the benefit of a political cause. Dishonesty of that nature would fly in the face of everything that the rather idealistic typical scientist has been taught about his profession.

Nuttin' like them hatin' libs...

...to spice things up!

Got a laugh out of a couple of comments on last post. Obviously struck a nerve with the libs.

They don't like to face facts:

1. Pro-health care reformers are losing ground.

2. The American people don't want this to become the law of the land.

3. Michael Ramirez speaks for the majority of Americans who do not want the "nanny state" that's been rammed down our throats for decades.

Putting two small piles of poop together...

...to make one big pile of poop!

We call it health care reform.

Michael Ramirez drew this:

Learning-styles

Wouldn't you agree that the education of our children is extremely important to the future of our nation?

Why, then, are so many crackpots allowed so much influence over it?

The latest scam to be exposed was pulled off by the "learning-styles" crowd. They claimed that we'd learn best if presentations/materials were geared toward our particular learning styles.

Sounds great, doesn't it? Unfortunately, there's no solid science behind it. As we so often find out - after the fact - studies that were supposed to support theories weren't at all scientific.

Pashier, McDaniel, Rohrer, and Bjork have called out the learning-styles camp here.

Our review of the learning-styles literature led us to define a particular type of evidence that we see as a minimum precondition for validating the use of a learning-style assessment in an instructional setting. As described earlier, we have been unable to find any evidence that clearly meets this standard. Moreover, several studies that used the appropriate type of research design found results that contradict the most widely held version of the learning-styles hypothesis, namely, what we have referred to as the meshing hypothesis (Constantinidou & Baker, 2002; Massa & Mayer, 2006). The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing. If classification of students’ learning styles has practical utility, it remains to be demonstrated.

Idealists promote ideas like learning-styles because it seems like it would be a great idea. How wonderful it would be if it were so, right?

Realists, on the other hand, see learning-styles theory for what it is: just another "feel good" education scam.

I don't dispute that we have different learning styles. However, I do think we've done children a great disservice by trying to teach them with a focus on those styles.

Try ordering at a fast-food restaurant without repeating yourself. What are the chances your order will be correctly filled? If the young person taking that order was a "visual learner", the chances aren't good.

You see, we've taught to their learning style by giving them written instructions. When we must give them verbal instructions, we make certain to repeat them until they understand.

Once is not enough...

Balloon Boy

The latest on the Balloon Boy story is here.

Put the blame for the hoax squarely on the parents' shoulders. What a pair of losers!

He portrayed the Heenes as growing increasingly desperate as their pitches for a reality TV show kept getting turned down by networks—and the family fell deeper into a financial hole. Lewis said the Heenes set in motion the balloon hoax in early October as a way to jumpstart the effort and get some attention.

They chose Oct. 15 because the weather was cooperating and the kids were home for school with parent-teacher conferences, allowing the Heenes to report that 6-year-old Falcon had floated away, Lewis said.

Once the parents were brought in for questioning, Richard Heene feigned sleep during the lie-detector test, claiming it was some sort of diabetic episode, Lewis said.

Of course, they wouldn't have had a snowball's chance in hell of getting their hoax off the ground if it weren't for our country's rabid media. They jump on any and every "story" the second it "breaks".

Twenty-four hour news channels seemed like a good idea at first. There are so many now, though, that there's just not enough solid news to go around. They've resorted to tabloid-type journalism and it's out of hand.

Not Just Yet

I'll post rant upon rant for a quite while before I can get to the Global Warming scam.

Give me some time - there are so many that got here "first".

Take the "We never walked on the moon!" crowd. It's absolutely sickening that young people today would even think about buying into that one. You might be surprised at how many believe it was all an elaborate hoax.

Ten years ago, a Gallup poll showed the 89% of us believed the moon landings were real. Six percent thought they were faked, and five percent were undecided. A Time/CNN poll in 1995 showed a shift to 83% believed, 6% didn't, and 11% weren't sure. Read about it here.

While I find those numbers disturbing, it gets worse. About.com has a newer poll here. While it's probably not as scientific as the others, I spot a trend.

Even with my vote for "real", that choice was picked by only 78%. Nineteen percent think we never walked on the moon and another one percent aren't sure. Check out current results (15,598 votes up to now) here.

Where's the respect for the thousands upon thousands of people who made the landings a reality?

How are the scammers who profit from the hoax theory allowed to get away with it?

We have laws that prevent criminals from capitalizing on their "fame". So, why are these jackasses allowed to get rich by smearing heroic Americans?

It's Getting Worser and Worser

I laugh at characters like Dale Gribble. Paranoia and stupidity can be funny.

Unfortunately, the world has become overpopulated with humans that can't tell the difference between reality and fantasy.

They're taking over, folks. The Dale Gribble's are in the majority.

You know Lee Harvey Oswald killed John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Still, scammers suck millions of dollars out of y'all with books, films, shows, and sites that try to tell you otherwise.

The Kennedy assassination happened over forty-six years ago. Since then, more and more nutcases have found larger and larger audiences.

It's getting worser and worser...