Siphoning, or, How To Get More of Ohioans Hard-Earned Money

The U.S. is in a recession.  Depending on what politician you talk to, we may even be in a depression, but that all depends on how much hyperbole you can stand.  Regardless, Ohio suffers through it more than most, because the state’s problems go back further than the recent financial crises.

Politicians just want to get along, party leadership provides bland “good-boy” politicians that won’t rock the boat- for better or for worse for fear of losing power (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?), and only small pockets of the state are business-friendly.  You know, the businesses that would provide jobs if they could afford to move here?  Yeah, those businesses.

Oops, they’re at it again.

My good friend Scott (see his personal site and his professional site) apprised me of the current round o’fun under review by the state ruling class.

The issue:  Ohioans are not consuming enough gas for the gas taxes to cover all road repair costs.  The leaders are investigating the use of a mileage tax instead.  As one interviewee stated, this is a long-term view, not something that would be implemented in the short term.

Maybe if they’d stop being so restrictive with businesses, they’d actually have more people live in the state, requiring more people to buy gasoline and pay the already-outrageous gas tax.

But that’s just me.

Ohio leadership, you win the Idiot of the Week.

To the bozo leadership in Ohio

All Is Right With the World

Ah, January 20, 2009. I woke up this morning without much effort. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and I had not a care in the world. My working day was great. Everyone got along, there was no complaining, no politicking, no blame games. It was a wonderful day.

And what was it that I heard outside of my own little world? There was no fighting in Darfur. The oppressor Israel stopped bombing Hamas, and poor, downtrodden Hamas stopped retaliating. Iran chose to stop building its nuclear program, because they simply decided that they wouldn’t need it any more.  The Taliban chose to stop fighting in Afghanistan, offered to give up Bin Laden, and ceased their their use of the opium trades to fund themselves – how’s that for hitting the trifecta?  And Pakistan and India started second level talks on a peace treaty between their two countries.

At home, the Big 3 chose to reject their bailout packages, and the unions decided to downsize their administrative layers and partner with the corporations.

As I said, it was a beautiful day. I would like to thank our federal elected officials from long ago, who had the foresight to schedule Martin Luther King Day on the Monday before Inauguration Day, where only Barack Obama could do justice to both holidays. Yes, President Obama is in the House, and all is right with the world. Never mind that he has accomplished nothing yet, and that he has not had a taste of true adversity. President Obama is already the greatest President America ever had; the next seven years and 364.25 days are a mere formality.

When I Blog Alone

I’d like to thank everyone who reguarly visits this site, and comments and laughs or laments along with me. 

I would like to reiterate a request I made when I started this blog:  One man alone cannot identify all the truly qualified idiots that show themselves to the light every week.  As you run across somebody, some thing, some entity that is truly deserving of the Idiot of the Week award, feel free to post their nomination in the latest SMISLT post, along with your reason for nominating them.  The committee of one (for now) will review the submissions and post the winners for all to see.

Thank you for your continued support.  After all, it is open season on idiots.

It’s Called “The Super Bowl”

The NFL playoffs started last week, starting the progressive elimination of teams until only two remain to play in “the big game”.

The big game.

Doesn’t sound right to say it that way, does it?  But that is the way you have to say it, if you are advertising your wares and have not bought into the official licensing agreement of the NFL to use the term “Super Bowl”.  So let me, on behalf of all those companies and advertisers that could receive a boost from sales but refuse to pay licensing fees to the NFL, say something:

SUPER BOWL
SUPER BOWL
SUPER BOWL
SUPER BOWL
SUPER BOWL
SUPER BOWL
SUPER BOWL
SUPER BOWL
SUPER BOWL
SUPER BOWL

The NFL makes enough money, you’d think they could use some of their goodwill to help companies instead of taking more money from them.  NFL:  You are my idiots of the week.

To the NFL

The NFL is not the only winner of the award this week.  No, I have a winner from last week, too, but did not have time to post.   The title of this version of the award is “How Not to Show Your Impartiality”.  Tell me if you’ve heard this one:

A media outlet that has a reputation for leaning right, but occasionally conducts on air conversations with an acerbic liberal writer, schedules another TV segment with this writer.  The station knows the writer has a book to promote, and they have no problem scheduling the writer, who will increase ratings, cause additional dialog and keep their station in the news for a couple days, if not for a full week.

The author’s latest book, though, points out some glaring biases in this station’s programming and coverage of the recent election cycle.  Realizing what this could mean to the station, and how they have a reputation to uphold with their viewers, permanently cancel the interview, and replace the author with one of the most vitriolic, right-wing on air personalities.  Because, of course, the best way for this station to disprove its right-wing bias is to cancel a scheduled appointment of the liberal author and replace the author with someone even more right-wing than the media outlet’s reputation.

Right?

Oh, one more thing.  The story is actually reversed: it was a left-leaning outlet that did this to an acerbic right-wing author.  You can read about it here.  Great job, NBC in general and the Today Show in particular.  Way to show your impartiality.  You win last week’s IOTW award:

Good job, NBC

It really is a good thing that the Fairness Doctrine would fix these kinds of issues across the media.  Oh, it doesn’t affect television, only radio?  How shocking!