Rahm Wants Illinois To Raise The Gas Tax

Chicago Tribune: Mayor Rahm Emanuel pushes state gas tax increase to fund major transportation bill 

I've been saying "sure, why not, just base it on miles of road per county." Well guess what I found at IDOT's website: Illinois Travel Statistics.

It's clear who needs the most infrastructure repair yearly. It's also clear where most people gas up their cars weekly. Proportionally, Cook county has the highest amount of road usage, at least four times that of the next highest county, DuPage. Beyond the top 13 in the chart, the rest pales by comparison, plus Cook county has the highest cost of living.

It won't really hurt the rich, but a gas tax is regressive and especially hurtful for people down-state who must commute 45 minutes to work or more than 10 miles to the nearest grocery store.

Propriety at the Gas Pump

I was at the Shell gas station up by Dixie Trucker’s Home yesterday and there was a serious human failure happening. There were four or five double-sided pumps. Every pump was occupied with a vehicle, but that wasn’t the problem.

Only about three of the pumps were actually in use. There were two vehicles sitting at pumps, either empty or with just a waiting passenger. It’s understandable that some people prefer paying with cash so they must leave their vehicle to go pay. If they tried to move their car out of the way they might alarm someone into thinking they were about to just “pump-and-dash.”

Then something happened that irked me. A woman approached one of the cars sitting at a pump, but she didn’t have just her keys and a receipt in her hand, she had a foot-long sandwich from the next door Subway restaurant. Instead of moving the car to one of the many empty parking spots in front of the building, she decided she would save herself some time and go get a sandwich.

Oh, that’s not all. She then got into her car which was still sitting at the pump, and proceeded to eat her sandwich, without a second thought about the other people waiting for a pump.

Meanwhile, I was finally able to pull up to another pump where a man had just finished filling plastic gas containers. He was driving a pickup with a large trailer that would not fit well next to the pump. At least he had the decency to keep his larger vehicle and trailer from blocking the access.

But, it was not only the woman who lacked the courtesy to move her car out of the way between the time she paid for their gas and going to eat lunch or browse the convenience store. There were at least two other people who failed to grasp the basic details of the situation, and it takes all genders, classes and races.

Some people assume a right of personal property to where ever they park their car. Wrong. Its okay to leave your car to go pay for the gas, but you better be right back to move your car to a parking spot if you’re going to stay and eat lunch at the restaurant next door.

Gas prices.

Gas prices gradually crawl up using a saw-tooth pattern that is intended to make the consumers feel a false sense of relief when the price goes down slightly after it spikes. The steep drop in gas prices last December brought the price of gas back down to early 2004 levels. Prices are now back up to Spring 2007 levels after only six months.

Food prices overseas falsely linked to Ethanol by news media

In Haiti and other countries, years of importing U.S. grain at prices below the cost of growing it locally, forced local farmers out of business and the local farm land changed ownership.

Then, one day, oil prices went up, gas prices followed, and then the cost of shipping grain overseas went up.

Suddenly, there’s nobody to locally grow cheaper crops, and the land is no longer owned by farmers.

Massive propaganda is being put out by the oil companies to blame Ethanol for the cost of corn while people are mostly complaining about the cost of rice.

This is what years of donating food has done to other countries. It has forced people into a state of dependence by making it impossible for them to grow their own food, and now we are starving them.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89850141

The organizations at risk of being exposed for this strategy are mentioned in the story

World Bank
United Nations
Asian Development Bank

The goal is the rearrangement of property ownership. The Strategy is to artificially manipulate food prices to the disadvantage of local farmers in developing countries, for the purpose of acquisition by multinational food growing corporations.

The points of manipulation are fuel prices by the oil companies, and food prices by the commodities brokers.

Sacred Cow, part II

Well they did it. The Illinois State Journal register printed my letter about not cooking and instead, eating only fresh fruits and vegetables.

I’m not going to imagine that it was my blog that motivated them, only the huge stack of letters on top of mine.

I am a little disappointed that my telling readers to stop cooking or buying processed foods didn't give them reservations about the letter's publication.

I was at Aldi's getting Broccoli, Bell Peppers, Cucumbers, Lettuce, Garlic, and Tomatoes when I saw this Trail Mix from a company called Southern Grove. I'll admit it is packaged but some of the vegetabes are too and that's unavoidable. I tried it and it was quite good.

Trail mix has dehydrated fruit and the drying process may or may not be natural. It seemed harmless enough, but a closer inspection revealed such things as "Sulfer Dioxide to preserve color" and "colored with Titanium Oxide"

It was pretty good despite having a material component commonly found in farts. (1)

The Sacred Cow is very real however. What else is sacrosanct? How about these gems:

• Stop driving cars. Ride bicycles instead. Got a problem with that? Read on.

• Live near where you work. People who live in Springfield and work in Springfield should get special parking stickers that give them privileges. Everyone else should pay extra (besides what they pay at the gas pump. Better yet, they should pay the city exactly the same amount of money they spend on gas commuting to and from Springfield for work every day.)

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(1) Sulfur Dioxide (http://www.nealhendrickson.com/mcdougall/020800pubadfarts.htm) see the paragraph on "Gas Solutions."