Violence continues in Hartford with lawmakers set to unveil a plan to help put a stop to it. The plan apparently includes a cease-fire between neighborhood groups, among other things.
I hope it works, for the sake of these kids who stand to lose the most from the violence.
What else is happening today?
7 comments:
"Though Bush himself has publicly embraced the amendment, he never seemed to care enough to press the matter. One of his old friends told NEWSWEEK that same-sex marriage barely registers on the president's moral radar. "I think it was purely political. I don't think he gives a s--t about it. He never talks about this stuff," said the friend, who requested anonymity to discuss his private conversations with Bush."
Via MSNBC
Has anyone heard anything out of Miriam Masullo and Scott MacLean in the 1st CD?
Masullo recently filed for a Primary.
You would think either of the candidates would want to be visible in the next few months.
It's the farm lobby that is blocking more use of ethanol. We could import ethanol from Brazil, but there's a big tariff. Our farmers would not be very competitive, and they've lobbied to have the large tariff.
Big oil companies do make a lot of profit, but only because they are big, not because they are significantly marking up the price. The oil industry has become fairly consolidated (at least, if you are a vertically integrated oil company, you're probably pretty big by now for efficiency purposes).
ExxonMobil in the past 12 months has made $36 billion in profit on $339 billion in sales. About 10%. Chevron Texas made $15.42 billion on $198.45 billion in sales, so about 8%.
Microsoft made $13.5 billion on sales of $42.64 billion, so about 32%. Some other profit percentages: IBM, 9.27% on $88.9 billion; Caterpillar 8.32% on $37.4 billion; Disney 8.22% on $32.33 billion; 3M 15.41% on $21.6 billion; Apple Computer 9.97% on $17.3 billion; McDonalds 12.41% on $20.76 billion.
I guess another problem is that if we did adopt ethanol use on a widespread basis, the web and tv commercials would be full of people making the argument that the amount of corn your car used when you went to the movies could feed a family in the third world, and isn't it terrible that by your driving, you are taking food out of their mouths? Trust me, that argument would almost certainly be used if food products were used to power cars.
In Brazil, they make ethanol from sugar cane. It's much more economical to use sugar cane than corn, as sugar cane produces more energy, and is a lot easier to grow.
Most cars can already run on a mix of 15% ethanol. Some can run on a mix of up to 85% ethanol.
Ethanol is difficult to ship via pipelines because it reacts with water, so it has to go via train or truck over land.
If we were serious about ethanol, we'd nix the ethanol tariff. This would likely mean, however, that we'd import most of our ethanol, because Brazil can grow sugar a lot more efficiently than we can.
Ethanol does take a lot of energy to make a gallon, much more than gasoline, so that's also a factor.
I'm pretty sure that all cars can already run on 10-15 ethanol and that all cars can run on up to 85% ethanol with a conversion kit (mainly new fuel pumps and fuel lines).
Also, don't forget vegetable oil as an alternative fuel for cars. All diesel cars can take it with a conversion kit. There is an interesting article about vegetable oil-powered cars in Western Mass in UMASS Magazine, here.
The other day I noticed at DSCC Website www.dscc.org how blatantly their Connecticut page ignores that Lieberman has a challenger named Lamont. (What will they do after our Primary victory, make a quick link to www.nedlamont.com ?)
Today, I note DSCC has a Blog. Join me, and post on your blogs promoting your readers to do the same, let's pound the DSCC Blog www.fromtheroots.org with messages from subtle to outraged asking for acknowledgement of this race by DSCC and also raising awareness of Ned Lamont nationwide.
I seem to have a little trouble registering right now, until they delete the username for my email address. But the Terms of Service seem to say that other than their right to moderate and ask for modification or removal, find their rules generally center around this: "Those users posting material not suitable for all audiences must agree that they are fully responsible for all the content they have posted anywhere on the service and allow DSCC to delete any content deemed inappropriate, offensive, libelous, or slanderous."
We know the power of word spreading through the Blogs, a few posts here and there and many individuals may register at DSCC and spread awareness of Ned Lamont's very viable challenge of Joe Lieberman. Perhaps if a message says "Don't donate to DSCC they are Pro Lieberman" it will not be appreciated. I bet some will get through to the fromtheroots Blog and its readers AND we have OTHER messages that won't be so controversial.
Bluecoat - that is my understanding as well: If the E85 conversion is done at manafacture, the only cost is the difference between ordinary fuel pumps and fuel lines and ones that can handle ethanol - negligible when compared to the price of a car.
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