Update and notes to October 9th post
Last months sales of SUV's were down over all. Good! At the beginning of these employee discount programs, large truck and SUV sales were up. Sales of these vehicles is not sustainable even with 20-25% of the price being cut. I hope GM realises this before they increase production of these vehicles to meet this apparent demand that now certainly does not exist. If not, to them a lower credit rating and one step closer to declaring bankruptcy. I also saw a statistic that reportedly 51% of Americans want more investment in mass transit compared to only 18% favouring more investment in big highway/freeway projects.
The government is incosistent about ethanol use and statistics. After looking around a bit I discovered that the dept. of Energy says that ethanol is a net energy loser and the dept. of agriculture says it is a net energy gainer. How are people supposed to make decisions and policy when the government can't even agree with itself on the energy transfer of ethanol?
The government is incosistent about ethanol use and statistics. After looking around a bit I discovered that the dept. of Energy says that ethanol is a net energy loser and the dept. of agriculture says it is a net energy gainer. How are people supposed to make decisions and policy when the government can't even agree with itself on the energy transfer of ethanol?
posted by Eric @ 19.10.05
1 Comments:
At 19 October, 2005 23:15,
Jeff said…
The problem is that mass transit is still being cut/not growing. I just glanced at an article today that said that Albany and other cities were thinking about cutting transit because of higher diesel prices. Of course, these cities all SHOULD have much more money to fund transit, but it usually gets taken up by idiotic new road programs.
CASE IN POINT...My (current) good ol' state of Alaska. Just about everyone's heard about the two "Bridges to Nowhere" earmarks by now. And trust me, they are extremely stupid ideas and they should certainly not be built. But Alaska is just now finding out how damaging these earmarks are.
See, 60% of the bridge earmarks are NOT additional money that the recently signed transportation act garnered for Alaska. Rather, they cut into the state's CORE transportation budget, i.e. what it would normally receive from the gas tax formula. So the crux of this is that the "earmarks" are, for the most part, simply a congressional act DICTATING how the State MUST spend some of the money that by law they get.
This means less money for repairing existing roads and improving transit. In fact, Anchorage is losing around $25 million compared to its previous allocations because of the bridges. Fairbanks is the same way. How are they going to pinch pennies? Look no further than their already subpar transit systems.
Post a Comment
<< Home