"New liquor law may leave some dry in Wash." New York Times, May 27, 2012
CASHMERE, Wash. - What is a Memorial Day weekend start-of-summer party without a trip to the liquor store? This rural corner of central Washington might find out.
Might?
If it's good enough for weed....
The shortage is temporary. At midnight on June 1, retailers that were long barred from the liquor trade, including large grocery stores, will be allowed to stock their shelves with higher-proof beverages, and former state-owned stores will reopen under new ownership. Beer and wine sales were not affected.
Then this is a nothing article and the headline is deceptive.
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I'll have one for the road:
"States seek new tolls to pay for highways" by Joan Lowy | Associated Press, May 27, 2012
WASHINGTON - Driving onto an interstate highway? Crossing a bridge on the way into work? Taking a tunnel under a river or bay? Get ready to pay.
Debt service to banks.
With Congress unwilling to contemplate an increase in the federal gas tax, motorists are likely to be paying ever more tolls as the government searches for ways to repair and expand the nation’s congested highways.
Related:
"As if gas prices weren’t high enough, several states across the United States are looking to raise fuel taxes they say are needed to pay for roads and bridges that are outdated, congested, and in some cases, dangerous."
Yeah, they are letting the states do it.
Tolling is less efficient and sometimes can seem less fair than the
main alternative, gasoline taxes. It can increase traffic on side roads
as motorists seek to evade paying.
Tolls are hardly a perfect solution, officials say. But to many states and communities, they are the best option available.
“It’s very hard in this environment for states to add capacity without charging a toll because they can’t afford to do it,’’ said Joshua Schank, president of the Eno Center for Transportation, a Washington think tank. “They’re barely able to maintain what they’ve got, and there is an urgent need for capacity.’’
Some changes are already underway. In addition to the tolls allowed on interstates in 15 states, mostly in the Northeast and Midwest, the United States has agreed to pilot toll projects on Interstate 95 in Virginia and North Carolina and Interstate 70 in Missouri.
A commission created by Congress to recommend ways to pay for upkeep of the nation’s transportation system predicted in 2009 that the United States will face nightmarish congestion unless it spends more.
The commission estimated all levels of government were spending a cumulative $137 billion less each year than is necessary to maintain and expand the current system. Without action, there will be a $2 trillion-plus backlog by 2035, it said.
How much is the empire costing us this year, $600-something billion dollars?
It has been nearly two decades since Congress last increased the federal gas and diesel taxes that have historically paid for highways.
Yeah, you are do for a gas pump up the ass again, Americans. (Blog editor drops head at the -- once-again -- endless agenda-pushing of my "news" article.
I'm not saying there are not problems and neglect, but they give you the feeling the road is going to fall through the earth just outside. Anything to $ell an agenda, I gue$$.
Meanwhile, the cost of road and bridge construction has gone up and the purchasing power of fuel taxes has declined by more than a third. Revenue is also down because people have been driving less due to the uncertain economy and because cars are becoming more fuel-efficient.
So doing the right thing via the fart-misting global warming crisis is leaving us shitty roads?
And if people have been driving less why is the price of gas at the pump always higher than the same time last year?
Could it, is it possible, it couldn't be, could it, that the oil markets are manipulated?
Federal and state fuel tax revenues peaked in 2007 at $72.4 billion, then dropped to $68.6 billion in 2010, the most recent year for which data are available. State toll collections rose from $4.9 billion in 2000 to $8.9 billion in 2010, and locally administered tolls rose from $1.6 billion in 2000 to $2.5 billion in 2009.
Hate to say I toll you so, but I toll you so.
The trust fund that pays for federal highway programs is forecast to go broke sometime next year, though the House and Senate are trying to negotiate a bill to shore up the funding and overhaul transportation programs.
Trust fund broke (or broke trust fund, same thing) about says it all when it comes to the AmeriKan government these days.
Charging tolls is the easiest near-term way to pay the bills, says Robert Atkinson, who chaired the financing commission.
So turn, lower, trousers, bend, spread, Americans. You know the drill.
Fifteen states, mostly in the Northeast and Midwest, that had turnpikes before the 1956 advent of the interstate system have grandfathered permission to collect tolls on 2,900 miles of the 47,000-mile system. But federal restrictions prevent other states from placing tolls on federal-aid highways except in limited circumstances.
States want Congress to increase their ability to charge tolls and to allow them to use the money for a variety of transportation needs - not just upkeep of the roads where tolls are collected, said Eugene Conti, North Carolina’s transportation secretary, at a Senate hearing last month.
The issue isn’t addressed in the highway bill now before Congress but is expected to be taken up next year.
Then why is this being featured in my Sunday paper?
WTF?
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I better call my boss:
"Employees’ cellphone use while driving is liability" by Ashley Halsey III | Washington Post, May 27, 2012
WASHINGTON - One was a lumber salesman who crippled a 78-year-old woman. Another was driving a toy company’s van when he killed a college sophomore. When a cable company driver rammed a stopped car at 71 miles per hour, a woman and her mother died. A driver in a company car didn’t react when traffic slowed, hitting a Honda and killing a 32-year-old woman.
All four drivers were using their cellphones. At a time when the National Safety Council estimates that about one-quarter of all crashes involve cellphones or texting - about 1.2 million accidents a year - these four crashes had something else in common.
The companies that employed those drivers were sued.
Distracted-driving lawsuits now are part of the legal landscape, and the
lawyers who bring them are increasingly going after the deep pockets of
corporations whose employees talk or text while behind the wheel.
And a federal magistrate ordered an Alabama trucking company to pay $18 million for an accident that happened when one of its drivers reached for a cellphone. Many corporations are eager to settle once they discover they are facing lawyers armed with the smoking gun of cellphone records.
The Arkansas lumber company whose salesman crippled the 78-year-old woman paid a $16.1 million settlement. And International Paper settled for $5.2 million after an employee on a cellphone caused a collision that cost a woman her arm.
Todd Clements, a Texas lawyer who sued the cable company for the accident that killed two women, thinks companies are wise to settle without a jury trial.
“People think there’s a good defense here by saying, ‘Everybody does it,’ ’’ Clements said. “Well, that’s not true, because the jury doesn’t want everyone to do it. They just want to do it themselves. It’s a huge disconnect.’’
Given the opportunity to play the scold, jurors are eager, Clement said, to punish corporations in what amounts to a primal act of self-preservation: By awarding huge amounts of money to plaintiffs, they encourage corporate bans on calling and texting.
David Teater, a transportation director at the National Safety Council, recently explored corporate liability in cases involving texting and cellphone use.
“There was a recent poll in California where fear of cellphone driving outranked drunk driving for the first time,’’ said Teater, whose 12-year-old son was killed by a 20-year-old woman who drove her Hummer through a red light while using a cellphone.
Teater links corporate liability to research that shows drivers using cellphones are four times as likely to be involved in a crash.
“If an employer knew a behavior in some other aspect of the business put employees at four-times-greater risk of injury, would they still expect or even encourage that behavior?’’ he said. “It’s a huge trend. It’s a real liability for companies, a real risk.’’
Whether it’s a company car, a company-issued phone, or just an employee making a business call in a private car on a private phone, the corporation is within the reach of a distracted-driving lawyer.
Many Fortune 500 companies have moved to ban all employee cellphone use while driving. UPS, DuPont, Chevron, CSX, Shell, and Time Warner are among them....
Huh. Phone went dead.
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Ah, home at last: Beer-guzzling cows crash Boxford party
I've seen some at parties, and they look fine through the beer goggles.
