Archive for October, 2008
Well, even though I'll be working at Obama's local headquarters tomorrow night, Saturday, and on half of election day... I think I can squeeze in the following:
I think I'll put on some old beat up greasy wranglers, grab a pair of ol' work boots held together with duct tape, don an ol' beat up and manure stained and blood stained and whiskey stained silver belly resistol, and I'll stand at the corner of 82 and 133
I'll have a big sign that reads, "WILL BE PRESIDENT FOR FOOD."
And you know what?.... I'll have another sign handy that reads..."AND I'LL LOWER YOUR TAXES CUZ I CAN EAT CHEAP!"
Whadduya say Conniff? Up for a remote, live show on 82? Sounds like we could have a heckuva good time. Go vote people!!! Just go vote. Be cool!
October 30th, 2008
By Frosty Wooldridge
In a recent speech, Barack Obama said, “We need to share the wealth with everyone!”
One of the infamous writers of the past, Karl Marx, said, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
Marx created socialism--communism, which proved one of the most dangerous and ominous economic tragedies of all time. Socialism works against human nature. It demands those who work share with those who don’t work. From our experiences in the past 100 years, it only works out of the barrel of a gun. As long as you hold the gun, you may enforce the tenets of communism! Finally, it espouses a classless society. From all the countries I visited during my world travels, places like dictatorship-driven China manifest Marx’s ideas at their worst.
As a college kid, I remember how colleges presented full ride scholarships to inner city athletes who could barely read or write past the 10th grade level. However, they carried a football like the ‘Midnight Express’ and hit like a freight train. At my university, I attended several classes, (Anatomy 316) with many of the football and basketball players, only to watch them attend the first and last class. They received ‘A’s’ but never studied. As a resident assistant (staff), I watched them play cards in the grill most nights.
How does that play out across the board? From my experience playing Big 10 football, I suspect that most defensive lines, at the college and professional ranks from the inner city, possess IQ’s not much higher than a patch of geraniums!
In the 60s, my college presented 100 Detroit inner city kids with full ride scholarships of tuition, room and board, books, clothes, transportation and spending money. Every night in my residence hall, they played cards, gobbled burgers and laughed a lot. I recall only one of them graduated.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need!”
Upon my college graduation, President Lyndon Baines Johnson enacted “The Great Society” initiative that followed Marx’s concept of giving money and assistance to those who earned nothing by doing nothing. Today, we find two to three generations living in cyclical poverty as they ‘feed’ off the system with food stamps, housing, medical and transport paid by taxpayers.
While working during the summers in Detroit, Michigan with a summer job from my teaching career, 1977 through 1990, I finished 12 hour days, then walked into a Kroger grocery store to see behemoth women pushing four carts into the checkout lane with 10 kids in tow. They paid for their staples with my money: food stamps. Aid to Dependent Children, created by our government, allowed inner city mothers to birth another child for a TV payment and another for a car payment and another for furnishing ‘her’ house. You may see the results of a burned out and destroyed city today by going to:
http://www.landliving.com/articles/0000000995.aspx
Be prepared for some sickening pictures of Detroit’s demise as working Americans fled the “Motor City”. Former Mayor Coleman Young broke the city with his corruption and the latest mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, now sits in prison for his corruption.
As a teacher, I found myself ‘encouraged’ by administrators to pass kids no matter their failing work in class. Soon, those kids discovered that ‘affirmative action grading’ allowed them to pass to the next grade by doing nothing. Once they ‘graduated’ from high school functionally illiterate with an ‘affirmative action’ diploma—they enjoyed jobs where they didn’t do much more than answer a phone, security guard or hold a DOT flag. Our government, made up of men like Obama, dumbed down America’s educational systems that now employ millions in indolent governmental jobs—that accomplish nothing more than not much at all.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
What did we discover in 2008? We find school systems turning out millions of students that remain functionally illiterate. Brian Williams at NBC reported last June that only 24 percent of high school students graduated from the “Murder Capital of the World” Detroit, Michigan. Similar percentages hold true for Chicago, Denver, Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York and Miami.
How will Obama fix it?
He will shove Marx’s ideas onto hard working American citizens. It’s going to look like this example from an unknown Internet blog:
“Today on my way to lunch I passed a homeless guy with a sign that read "Vote Obama, I need the money." I laughed.
“Once in the restaurant my server wore an "Obama 08" tie, again I laughed as he had given away his political preference--just imagine the coincidence.
“When the bill came I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that I was exploring the Obama redistribution of wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to
redistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need--the homeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed from my sight.
“I went outside, gave the homeless guy $5 and told him to thank the server inside as I've decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy was grateful.
“At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment I realized the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn even though the actual recipient needed money more.
“I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application.”
Great Britain’s Prime Minister during WWII, Winston Churchill said, “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy; its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”
As this nation moves away from personal accountability and personal responsibility, we diminish our U.S. Constitution, our Republic and our civilization.
##
To take action: www.numbersusa.com ; www.thesocialcontract.com ; www.fairus.org ; www.vdare.com
www.patriotunion.org ; www.alipac.us ; www.firecoalition.com ; www.cairco.org
Become a member of “Frosty’s Press Agent Corps” whereby you volunteer a few hours to send out emails to top TV and radio hosts to offer top speakers on America’s overpopulation crisis driven by unending immigration. Email frostyw@juno.com and receive two informational letters showing you exactly what to do.
Roy Beck's "IMMIGRATION BY THE NUMBERS" is the single best educational appreciation of America's future if we allow ourselves to add another 100 million people. Just click on this site for the most sobering experience of your children's future.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4094926727128068265&q=roy+beck&hl=en
Roy Beck gives a graphic presentation of our fate if we continue to allow legal and illegal immigration to swamp this country. If you have children, you will be particular unnerved at their fate. I know Roy Beck personally and his integrity and knowledge stand at the top. Pass this web site 14 minute video far and wide across America to educate everyone you know. We either stop this human tsunami or the future of this country will be much like Rome's. We must, as a nation and a civilization, move to secure our country from this massive, unrelenting population overload from a line that never ends. This will be the most compelling 14 minute video of your life.
Once you see it, go to my web site for action items www.frostywooldridge.com and join www.numbersusa.com to become a weekly faxer of pre written letters and join the phone calling teams
Bob Woodruff of ABC asked input from all citizens concerning the future of our planet. Go to www.earth2100.tv for a sobering reality check as to what we face and to what I have been writing about for the past 20 years. Our ‘window’ to change to a balanced population and non-polluting energy diminishes every day we listen to irresponsible media and thus ignore the blatant symptoms manifesting all over America and the planet.
This three minute interview with Adam Schrager on “Your Show” May 4, 2008, NBC Channel 9 News, addresses the ramifications of adding 120 million people to USA in 35 years and six million people to Colorado as to water shortages, air pollution, loss of farmland, energy costs and degradation of quality of life. In the interview, Frosty Wooldridge explains the ramifications of adding 120 million people to the USA in 35 years. He advances new concepts such as a “Colorado Carrying Capacity Policy”; “Colorado Environmental Impact Policy”; “Colorado Water Usage Policy”; “Colorado Sustainable Population Policy”. Nationally, the USA needs a "National Sustainable Population Policy" to determine the carrying capacity of this nation for the short and long term. Wooldridge is available for interviews on radio and TV having interviewed on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and FOX.
Click the link to view the 3 minute interview with NBC's Adam Schrager:
www.frostywooldridge.com Click the “Audio/Video” tab
Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents – from the Arctic to the South Pole – as well as six times across the USA, coast to coast and border to border. In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece. He presents “The Coming Population Crisis in America: and what you can do about it” to civic clubs, church groups, high schools and colleges. He works to bring about sensible world population balance at www.frostywooldridge.com
October 30th, 2008
The use of percentages for analysis can reveal much that is valuable, but even when the math is correct it is the context which determines whether the results are more misleading than informative.
If you sold two widgets last year, and four this year, you’ve gotten a 100 percent increase in sales! Unfortunately, you’ve still only sold four widgets.
If you go to a new area that’s never seen a widget, initially you may have a huge percentage increase in sales, but that will level off as you fill the demand for widgets. In a recent letter to the editor, the executive director of RFTA suggested that we need to go all the way back to 1987 to generate statistics with a broader perspective. That would allow us to find bus ridership growth percentages that actually exceed population growth percentages. The problem with this idea is that in 1987, valley service only extended as far as El Jebel.
The entire area from El Jebel to Glenwood Springs obviously had an untapped segment of the population whose transportation needs are suited to a bus, and they provided a fresh source of new ridership when the service was first introduced. In contrast, the current Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) proposal will be an incremental service increase in an area where most of the transit clientele has been well served for over a decade.
The decade from 1997 to 2007 is the appropriate base period to determine what we might achieve with a major expansion in bus service, and whether the cost is proportional to the benefit, because the area served has been relatively constant during that time. We have previously established that during this period population in the RFTA service area grew by about 38 percent, bus ridership by 21 percent, and Operating and Maintenance (O&M) expenses increased by about 130 percent.
O&M expenses are generally as much as 80 to 90 percent of the total transit budget, and represent the nuts and bolts of getting the rubber on the road. Consequently, there is a close relationship between miles driven and O&M costs. During the same period in which O&M costs increased by 130 percent, RFTA reports increasing their total miles driven by 6 percent. Let’s call that a ratio of 21 to 1 between increases in costs and miles, and move on to what little we know about RFTA’s future assumptions.
The first full year of BRT system operation is expected in 2014, and RFTA projects that O&M costs will increase 100 percent, to about $40 million per year. However, RFTA also estimates that they will have increased their total miles by 53 percent, resulting in a plummeting ratio of 2 to 1 between costs and miles in the years before the full BRT plan kicks into high gear.
RFTA may be expecting some stunning reversal in recent trends in O&M costs, but the source of these savings is unknown. When asked for a pro forma of projected income and expenditures, RFTA provided a financial plan that ends in 2014, just at the point when the complete costs of the new system need to be known.
It currently costs about $31 million per year to operate both the RFTA and Snowmass Village transit systems, making this the second largest public expenditure in the area behind the school system. (The Aspen and RE-1 school districts = $42 million)
The 5 million passengers on the two bus systems replace something in the range of 2-4 percent of the private vehicle trips made in the RFTA service area each year. The disproportion between person trips made in private vehicles and those in mass transit means that to achieve just a further 5 percent reduction in vehicle trips would require bus ridership to increase by 2 to 3 times over current levels.
A 100 to 200 percent increase in bus ridership is not an achievable goal for such a mature service, and it seems doubtful that we are prepared to spend more on transit than we commit to education - just to make a negligible reduction in traffic volumes. But neither does there seem to be any awareness that this is the real context of support for expanded transit service.
Next: Part X
Where do we go from here?
October 29th, 2008
ASPEN, COLORADO (Post Time News) - Aspen voters who go to the polls Tuesday are being asked by local politicans and public officials to make momentous decisions that could ultimately cost residents over $300 million combined for affordable housing, daycare, and transportation.
“All these referendums are coming at a horrible time,” Pitkin County Commissioner Jack Hatfield told Post Time News. I’m not going to support any of them [except Referendum 1A to protect Colorado's lakes and rivers]. We are going through tough economic times and should not be asking voters to pay more in taxes to support referendums. It is just fiscally irresponsible. This is just wrong.”
“We should not be asking for all this money,” Aspen resident Mike Maple said at a town hall meeting on the ballot items. “This is wrong. We don’t need tax increases, now we need tax relief.”
Continue Reading October 29th, 2008
I went to the Hickory House and La Cantina on Monday night to watch game 5 of the World Series between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. To my surprise, in each case there were more televisions set to Monday Night Football than there were to the World Series game. The patrons at the restaurant were also more concerned with the football game as well.
And this wasn't just any baseball game it was the World Series and the Phillies were on the brink of eliminating the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. So it turns out that just a regular Monday Night Football Game was able to attract more attention than a World Series playoff elimination game. I think this is proof that the National Football League (NFL) is surpassing Major League Baseball (MLB) as America's new national pastime.
Continue Reading October 28th, 2008
By Frosty Wooldridge
Ever wonder why millions upon millions of people flee to the United States for a better life? Every year? Have you thought about why the line of human misery worldwide grows by 77 million annually? What might cause a person to uproot from his or her home country for a perilous journey toward the United States? Or Europe? Or Australia? Or Canada?
Short answer: poverty, hopelessness, sheer human wretchedness!
Have you heard of the “Human Misery Index”? It details countries where human misery supersedes human well being. It accelerates all over the planet.
Is there a misery index in the United States? Would 28 million people living on food stamps and over 1.5 million homeless merit such a name tag? How about millions of home foreclosures? What about 14 million unemployed?
But I digress! Let’s talk about why people starve to death by the millions. I am willing to bet most adult Americans tune into “Feed the Children” Public Broadcasting channels from church groups that show horrific pictures of African children starving to death or children from India dying from lack of food and water. They implore you to send money to feed the children.
Have you ever wondered what happens when they feed the children? Take a guess! Those children become adults and birth more children with no ability to sustain them and little to no birth control to manage the misery that could be prevented. Thus, if you remember back in the 60s, we sent food to countries like Bangladesh. As a college student, I gave up one meal a week to ‘feed the children’ in Bangladesh. I didn’t ponder the results of that act. Result: women who birthed eight children watched them all live instead of six of them dying. Later, all those children birthed another eight children or more, which resulted in Bangladesh growing from less than 100 million to more than 144 million. Unfortunately, that terrific number of people lives in a landmass less than the size of Iowa! More electrifying, that country expects to double to 290 million by mid century.
China and India grow by an added eight to ten million annually. Mexico grows by 1.5 million each year. Africa, currently at 767 million expects to double to 1.4 million by mid century.
To give you a little idea of where we’re headed and what we face, China currently adds 25,000 automobiles to its highways every seven days. That country adds two coal-burning electrical plants per month. While you watch the world powers line up to siphon off the last of world oil supplies as well as food riots in the Middle East—do you think anyone addresses the root causes of our 21st century dilemma?
As the world rages toward an added three billion humans on the planet in 40 years, the United States rages right along with them. Why? We grow as the third fastest country in the world, not by our own hand, but by the hand of legal and illegal immigration. Where, pray-tell, and when, pray-tell, do we expect this international dilemma to stop?
Jolting answer: it will not!
Why? Culture and religion! All great religions promote unending and limitless birth rates. The Catholic Church, no matter how much humans suffer, promulgates endless birth rates. That holds true for Buddhism, Islam and the rest of them.
So, what’s the big deal? Too many people, that’s the big deal!
For the past eight years, George Bush, with his myopic lack of wisdom, withheld $39.7 million annually worldwide authorized by Congress for Family Planning. Since 2002, Bush withheld a total of $235 million for family planning and reproductive health care programs for 154 countries on the planet. Congress engaged logic stalled by absurd presidential thinking.
House Rep. Carolyn Maloney said, “The Bush administration remains in a retrograde rut blinded by political extremism.”
Bush balks because he thinks Family Planning means abortion. It does not! It means birth control. It means educating women and giving them reproductive options to choose viable-sized families they can feed and sustain. It might mean living and thriving within the carrying capacity of their countries.
Wouldn’t Bangladesh be much better off with Family Planning resulting in only 20 million people in a landmass the size of Iowa instead of 144 on their way to 290 million? Wouldn’t the world human family be better off not seeing a total of 18 million human beings starving to death annually with the senseless reality that 10 million of those children fail to reach 12 years of age? (Source: World Health Organization)
Wouldn’t the U.S. be better off with its balanced and sustainable 2.03 fertility rate among its population that leads to a viable and sustainable future? Wouldn’t we be better off if we hadn’t added 100 million people in the last 40 years? Wouldn’t it be prudent if we didn’t import 2.4 million immigrants--given the clear population onslaught--annually on our way to adding another 100 million people to this country by 2035?
Not according to the troglodyte George Bush and his minions! I don’t care if you’re a liberal or a conservative. We cannot keep racing up this crowded path of human misery. We must move toward a sustainable future in respect for our fellow travelers—humans, plants and animals.
It will not happen if we fail to address root causes of our accelerating national dilemma. You want to do something? Visit www.populationpress.org for more information on how you can take action.
I am reading a compelling book, “The Long Emergency” by James Howard Kunstler. He said, “The world will be in trouble long before we run out of oil…it will be harder and costlier to extract and this remaining oil will be contested by everyone. (China and India as they add 25,000 cars plus weekly to their 2.4 billion populations) At peak oil, there is massive potential for system failures of all kinds, social, economic and political. Peak oil is quite literally a tipping point. Beyond peak, things unravel and the center does not hold. Beyond peak oil, all bets are off about civilization’s future.”
We, as a civilization, must quickly pull our heads out of our proverbial rear-ends and make smarter, more courageous decisions for our own good and the future of our own country—and our planet home.
##
To take action: www.numbersusa.com ; www.thesocialcontract.com ; www.fairus.org ; www.vdare.com ;www.patriotunion.org ; www.alipac.us ; www.firecoalition.com ; www.cairco.org
BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA: D.C.: (202)224-2854
CHICAGO, IL: (312)886-3506
SPRINGFIELD, IL: (217)492-5089
MARION, IL.: (618)997-2402
MOLINE, IL.: (309)736-1217
PLEASE CONTACT VIA E-MAIL (OR WEBFORM - OBAMA'S): SEN. OBAMA: http://obama.senate.gov/contact/
SEN. MCCAIN AT: robert_fischer@mccain.senate.gov
JOHN MCCAIN:
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: MESA, AZ: (480)897-6289
D.C. (202)224-2235 ; PHOENIX, AZ: (602)952-2410 ; TUCSON, AZ: (520)670-6334
Become a member of “Frosty’s Press Agent Corps” whereby you volunteer a few hours to send out emails to top TV and radio hosts to offer top speakers on America’s overpopulation crisis driven by unending immigration. Email frostyw@juno.com and receive two informational letters showing you exactly what to do.
Roy Beck's "IMMIGRATION BY THE NUMBERS" is the single best educational appreciation of America's future if we allow ourselves to add another 100 million people. Just click on this site for the most sobering experience of your children's future.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4094926727128068265&q=roy+beck&hl=en
Roy Beck gives a graphic presentation of our fate if we continue to allow legal and illegal immigration to swamp this country. If you have children, you will be particular unnerved at their fate. I know Roy Beck personally and his integrity and knowledge stand at the top. Pass this web site 14 minute video far and wide across America to educate everyone you know. We either stop this human tsunami or the future of this country will be much like Rome's. We must, as a nation and a civilization, move to secure our country from this massive, unrelenting population overload from a line that never ends. This will be the most compelling 14 minute video of your life.
Once you see it, go to my web site for action items www.frostywooldridge.com and join www.numbersusa.com to become a weekly faxer of pre written letters and join the phone calling teams.
Bob Woodruff of ABC asked input from all citizens concerning the future of our planet. Go to www.earth2100.tv for a sobering reality check as to what we face and to what I have been writing about for the past 20 years. Our ‘window’ to change to a balanced population and non-polluting energy diminishes every day we listen to irresponsible media and thus ignore the blatant symptoms manifesting all over America and the planet.
Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents – from the Arctic to the South Pole – as well as six times across the USA, coast to coast and border to border. In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece. He presents “The Coming Population Crisis in America: and what you can do about it” to civic clubs, church groups, high schools and colleges. He works to bring about sensible world population balance at www.frostywooldridge.com
October 25th, 2008
I've been getting slammed with emails forwarded to me by those in my life that are a major part of the religious right, the neoconservative, so called republican, do-gooders who happen to be friends of mine, and/or part of what little family I have. I'm gonna take those emails I've archived the last few weeks, and use them in a constructive way here with a post. But now, I'm gonna take just one of them, the only one that makes any sense to this Moderate Independent Patriot... and share it with others here. I, like Charlie Reese, think we should vote non of the above and help foster a complete over-haul of new people in Washington. Enjoy this, I know many of you will! -- J
Charlie Hit The Nail On The Head.............
> This is an article written by Charlie Reese, a former columnist for the
> Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.
> Very interesting perspective on the state of our Nation!
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> 545 PEOPLE
> By Charlie Reese
>
> Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and
> then campaign against them.
> Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans
> are against deficits, we have deficits?
>
> Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation
> and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?
>
> You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.
>
> You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on
> appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
>
> You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
>
> You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
>
> You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
>
> One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme
> Court justices 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly,
> legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems
> that plague this country.
>
> I excluded the members of the Federa l Reserve Board because that problem
> was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its
> Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally
> chartered, but private, central bank.
>
> I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason.
> They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a
> senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing.
> I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash.
> The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what
> the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to
> determine how he votes.
>
> Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that
> what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con
> regardless of party.
>
> What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive
> amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a
> Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating
> deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force
> the Congress to accept it.
>
> The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole
> responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and
> approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House?
> She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members,
> not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president
> vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.
>
> It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not
> replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of
> incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic
> problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you
> fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the
> federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they
> want to exist.
>
> If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
>
> If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.
>
> If the Marines are in IRAQ , it's because they want them in IRAQ .
>
> If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement
> plan 20 not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.
>
> There are no insoluble government problems.
>
> Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they
> hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and
> advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to
> regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let
> them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical
> forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them
> from doing what they take an oath to do.
>
> Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.
>
> They, and they alone, have the power.
>
> They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are
> their bosses provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own
> employees.
>
> We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!
>
> Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel
> Newspaper.
|
Amen, Brother Charlie. We need more Charlies out here....
October 23rd, 2008
In this wacky-tobaccy world of 21st Century politics, if you can’t parboil an idea down to a sound byte then you might as well chug it raw. We the people like our politics plain and simple, like meat and potatoes: Democrats and Republicans, Liberals and Conservatives, good guys and bad girls—with nothing much in between.
The problem for pols, pundits, and poobahs is that the world doesn’t work that way here on Lifeboat America. A black-and-white world nowadays is vacuous and often insulting, with all nuance lost in the rigidity of pre-sharpened saws and crackpot sound bytes presented like precious family gew-gaws.
And guess what? Voters have noticed: in state after state they’re simply not buying. We’re not talking about Ralph Nader or John Anderson or Ross Perot or even Bob Barr—third-party candidates who now and again arrive on the Presidential stage with a megaphone for disenfranchised citizens and license to scream bloody murder because they just can’t win.
Continue Reading October 22nd, 2008
ASPEN, COLORADO (Post Time News)—No stranger to asking voters to approve tens of millions of dollars of improvements, the Aspen School District is going back to voters again for the third time since 2001 to ask for the passage of a $12 million bond for affordable housing rental units that comes with an ultimate repayment price tag of $21.6 million.
In 2005 the Aspen School District convinced voters to pony up for $33 million to build a new Middle School; in 2001, the District asked for and received another $43 million for a new High School. In all through November 2008, the Aspen School District has asked voters for $88 million in funds on ballot questions since 2001. The repayment cost on the latest bond—on the ballot as Referendum 3 A—would be up to $1.147 million annually.
“We realize that we have asked the district for a lot of money in the past years,” Aspen School District Superintendent Dr. Diana Sirko told Post Time News. “But with this referendum we were very fiscally conservative. We were going to ask for more but in the end decided against it. I am pretty sure that we are not going to have to go back to the voters for money again any time soon. I am confident in that.”
Continue Reading October 22nd, 2008
The information collection process for this series of articles began more than a year ago, and RFTA has been very patient and generally responsive to our requests. However, the data which has been most difficult for them to produce is the information which is most critical to our analysis.
After several unanswered requests for the average trip length of bus riders on the Highway 82 corridor, it was assumed that RFTA did not have such an estimate. They finally supplied their version of this statistic last week, only after our independent estimate was published in Part VII. The difference between the two is minor.
Having the trip length estimate provides us the opportunity to calculate the answer to one of the most fundamental questions regarding current conditions. What is the average occupancy of buses currently running along the corridor? Despite this being a core question which would presumably be among the first things asked by the RFTA board before proceeding with the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) expansion plan, RFTA has not determined average occupancy.
Using RFTA’s trip length estimate, and tinkering with the figures to account for such things as variations in the number of bus seats on a particular style of bus, the occupancy percentage could move a few points one way or another. Regardless, our basic conclusion from last week still stands - buses on the corridor route are, on an annualized average basis, running about one third full.
According to RFTA the important factor is that riders during peak hours in peak season are experiencing standing room only conditions, but they have not reported the number of runs affected or what portion of the entire service this number represents. Perhaps this information will be available next week in response to this article?
RFTA purchased or leased 17 buses in the last two years, but has not, in the space of three months of questioning, been able to quantify how much of this rolling stock represents new and additional seats which are now available to respond to the increased peak ridership demand. Perhaps this information will be available next week?
Whatever the status of the peak period situation, its relevance to the planned BRT system is extremely tenuous because BRT calls for increased service throughout the day. This point seems to have been missed even by the Federal Transit Authority (FTA), which is reviewing RFTA’s grant request. The FTA commented that “a few references are made to increases in supply that would result from the project, e.g. 17 bus trips per morning peak hour to 28 bus trips per morning peak hour, but no explicit mention of how demand meets this supply is provided.” If the FTA is skeptical about peak demand, the realization that the remainder of the proposed service expansion overwhelms any discernable need is probably not far behind.
RFTA’s response to the FTA was to cite the Corridor Investment Study (CIS) from 2003, perhaps the least credible source for ridership projections ever produced.
Just before last week’s article went to press, RFTA also provided the statement that “the last estimate of ridership that our consultants have provided specifically for Highway 82 corridor commuter ridership for 2017 is 3.12 million.” However, this new number was also preceded by the caveats that, “our consultants determined the travel demand model is not calibrating accurately and more effort would need to be expended so we can use it to realistically project ridership,” and “the Board of Directors decided to wait on expending any more effort on the model development until we hear back from FTA”.
The 3.12 million ridership figure, aside from being labeled inaccurate, is problematic as a means to determine what is being predicted for a ridership increase on the BRT route. The number is a composite which lumps in routes such as Snowmass Village/Aspen and Woody Creek/Aspen. While the Snowmass to Aspen route may indeed experience ridership growth as the result of making it a free service, it is not part of the BRT expansion plan.
If we borrow the basic assumption consultants made in their “last estimate” to calculate the percentage gain in riders for the next nine years, and apply it to the routes specific to BRT, we come up with about a 50 percent increase by 2017. Coincidentally, that percentage also happens to be about what the average occupancy would be on the existing bus service if it were to absorb that ridership increase.
RFTA doesn’t believe it can achieve its ridership goal without BRT, but the down side will be that the full schedule nature of the expansion will push average occupancy down to a point where buses will be running around about one quarter full.
The effort required to produce this analysis is absolutely without explanation. For the $650,000 the public paid for the BRT planning process, this information should be available on a summary page at the front of the report.
Next: Part IX
More things that make you go hmmmm.
October 22nd, 2008
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