Fort Wayne Gets E85 Stimulus - Ugh…
From the city’s press release:
Fort Wayne, Ind. – Through the Clean Cities program, the City of Fort Wayne will get cost-sharing stimulus money from the U.S. Department of Energy as part of an American Reinvestment and Recovery Act competitive grant that will reduce petroleum consumption.
Next year, the City will receive a $2,000 reimbursement for the purchase of each hybrid vehicle, up to $18,000, through the Central Indiana Clean Cities Alliance Comprehensive Alternative Fuels Implementation Plan.
Working in cooperation with the City, Lassus Bros. Oil will get more than $200,000 to add three E85 stations, which will bring Lassus’ total in the Fort Wayne area to five. E85 is an alternative fuel made from a blend of ethanol and gasoline.
Ethanol!?! E85 is such a scam. For those that don’t know E85 is a corn-based fuel that is 85% ethanol and can only be used in newer flex-fuel vehicles that have fuel systems (pump, lines, etc) modified to accept the higher alcohol level.
The catch is, due to the higher octane rating and compression ratios needed to run in a standard gasoline engine, vehicles running on E85 are about 20% less efficient. That means the consumer must pay 20% less per gallon in order to break even - a spread that I’ve only seen a couple of times at my local Lassus station.
President Obama and Congressional Democrats completely fail on health care debate
I have generally thought that as a political party the Democrats have tended to stick together more and been more effective as a party than the Republicans.
That being said the last three years of Democratic Congressional leadership and the last seven months during which we have had a strong Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress and a Democratic President have proven me wrong; especially as it relates to the healthcare debate that is raging in this country.
I personally think that our health care system is in need of reform. That being said; many of the reforms being proposed by Democrats will NOT fix the underlying problems in the health care system; in fact, many will make it worse.
The Democrats have completely failed on the health care issue for several reasons:
- I think the largest reason they have failed is that they currently have five different bills in consideration. Each of these bills is significantly different from each other. This has put the Democrats at a disadvantage because they do not know what is even one of the bills; much less all five bills.
- I think the next largest reason they have failed is that President Obama at one point dictated that a health care bill needed to be passed in 2-3 weeks. This was absurd and riled up the opponents of the current health care reform as well as put off some of its supporters.
- I think another large reason the Democrats have failed is that a large number of Democrats have been elected in traditionally Republican states in the last few years. These Democrats are moderate Democrats and know they may well lose their re-election attempts if they support the current health care reform legislation. This has made these Democrats nervous and “gunshy.”
- I think the number one issue with Americans is the economy and jobs. I think the number two issue with most Americans is irrelevent compared to number one. I think the Democrats have made a huge mistake in trying to radically reform our health care system at a time when unemployment is approaching 10%, a record number of Americans are delinquent on their mortgage payments, and consumer confidence is at an all time low. Americans are concerned with the economy and not with health care reform.
- For the most part the Democrats seems absolutely desperate to get at least 1-3 Republican Senators to vote for the bill. That is 100% absurd. The American people are going to consider this a Democratic piece of legislation whether 3 Republican Senators vote for it or none vote for it. Over the last several months the Democrats have had the support of 60 Senators, note it only takes 50 Senators to get the bill passed!
- The non partisan Congressional Budget Office came out and said the current plan would not lower the cost of health care and were not revenue neutral. This hurt the Democrats a lot; ironically the Democratic Leadership said that future legislation would lower the costs and that is was unfair the CBO graded the proposals. This was patently absurd since the Democrats were trying to get their bill voted on… Duh…
No matter your political persuasion there is no doubts the Democrats have handled this like a bunch of buffoons.
Mike Sylvester
Have you heard the last shoe to fall?
I guess that the time to say, “I told you so” is rapidly approaching. Todays revelation on the front page of the News-Sentinel, that the walkway between the old Indiana Hotel and the unneccessary new downtown hotel will not be open to the public (which is paying $1.3 million for it!) is the latest. Good ole Greg Leatherman can, with a straight face, say that this is in the contract and can’t be changed.
What else is he hiding from his own Redevelopment Commission and the tax paying public? Why in the heck did the city pay for a walkway that will only be used by the hotel? You have been told why already - THE HOTEL IS NOT NEEDED AND WILL NEVER BE SUCCESSFUL - that’s why no entity wanted to finance it’s construction! And why was the bidding on the construction contracts done to enable contractors to see the prior bids by their competitors BEFORE their final bid! Can you say possible “KICKBACKS” ? That’s one way to get the net cost to the builder down. Is this what happened here? We will never know unless someone comes forward who has been a party to any deception that may have been involved.
I recall that the guy from the Indianapolis general contractor was quoted by Bill Brown as saying in a telephone call from our mayors office that he probably should not have written that ”the electrical went to the builder’s ‘favored’ electrical contractor”. Can anyone guess why that entity possibly was favored? I understand that they bid only once, whereas at least one of their competitors bid the job two or three timesbefore the ‘favored’ responded. Yes I realize this was not a “public” bid but the public sure is paying most of the cost with, it seems, very little benefit.
City Council Impotence
If you watch the city council meetings long enough you eventually realize that the council is a reactionary body that simply votes up or down on the administration’s ordinances. Very, very few of the ordinances are actually sponsored by councilmembers. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this - the day to day grind of city business requires a large number of ordinances the majority of which are routine and non-controversial.
But what I’ve also noticed is that the council doesn’t tend to use the powers they do have to enact any substantive change. It’s almost as if they believe it would somehow be unfair to hold the administration’s feet to the fire on one item in order to get what they want on another item. Call it horse trading, quid pro quo, whatever - the point is that sort of stuff is the norm for other legislative bodies but it’s rarely seen at city council. It could be that much of this is done behind the scenes and thus the public just never sees it. I don’t think that’s the case though and I’ll provide an example.
The separation of the city and county 911 dispatchers has been an irritant to seemingly everyone from the mayor, to council, to the citizenry. Last year councilman Pape put forward a bold proposal to eliminate the entire Communications department budget of $6 million in order to force them into a consolidation agreement with the county. Several councilmembers supported the idea but thought it was premature, deciding to issue a stern warning to them instead.
So what has happened? Nothing as far as I know. There’s still no consolidation and there won’t be until it’s forced upon them. And that brings me back to main point. If this truly is something the council believes in then why don’t they force the city’s and county’s hands? It doesn’t seem that difficult and could’ve been accomplished two separate times this year.
When the county was negotiating with the city to bail them out of their bridge funding problem why didn’t the city council make 911 consolidation a requirement of that agreement? And why not use 911 consolidation as leverage towards the city and county’s agreement involving the purchase of Renaissance Square?
I don’t necessarily believe that councilmembers should hijack every ordinance by pushing for items that aren’t germane, but it is wholly unacceptable that the citizens of Fort Wayne and Allen County continue to be put in harms way by bureaucrats that can’t play nice. So when any ordinance comes up that demands city and county cooperation, 911 consolidation should be a prerequisite for that ordinance passing. If it’s not, then city council is complicit in perpetuating the 911 status quo…
The True Cost of Government Handouts
I wanted to highlight a post from Calculated Risk that shows the true cost of the Cash for Clunkers program as well as the $8000 first-time home buyer’s tax credit. The premise is quite simple - namely a certain number of cars and homes that qualify for the handout would’ve sold anyway. But the additional sales, those stimulated solely by the tax credit, are what the taxpayer is paying for - so what is that cost?
If Edmonds.com is correct, and total sales were 1.17 million (NSA) in August, then the tax credit only generated about 320 thousand extra sales. Of course some regular car buyers might have put off a purchase to avoid the rush in August, so this isn’t perfect, but instead of costing taxpayers $4,170 per car (as announced by DOT), the cost to taxpayers per additional car sold was close to $7,200.
So instead of handing out $4k for a new car we actually handed out $7k. As bad as that sounds it’s nothing compared to the first-time home buyer handout:
Here is the math: 1.9 million buyers qualify for the credit (the NAR estimates between 1.8 and 2.0 million) = $15.2 billion.
The NAR estimates the tax credit resulted in 350 thousand additional purchases. So divide $15.2 billion by 350 thousand = $43,000 per additional home. And the numbers will get worse if the program is extended.
The taxpayers are forking out $43k for each additional home sold! I can’t imagine the majority of these homes are worth more than $150k so the taxpayer is subsidizing 1/3 of the cost of the homes purchased by this program.
The incompetence and lack of basic financial sense never ceases to amaze me when it comes to government decisions. The taxpayer is heavily subsidizing a small segment of people to do something they would’ve ultimately done anyway - e.g. they are just shifting the demand forward. As Mike Sylvester would say - this is economic rearrangement and nothing more.
If I have to try and think of something positive about these programs then I would say at least it isn’t rewarding people who have made pisspoor financial decisions in the past. But that’s as far as I’ll go…
