How is the law legal?Originally Posted by RandBlade
Ignoring the Constitution helps a great deal, but there's no requirement for the law to be consistent, or even to not be contradictory. It's legal because the majority of treasonous sociopaths on the hill voted for it, which is all that matters. Three cheers for the law!
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.
The Jones At was also interfering with the oil clean up with BP i believe...
Brevior saltare cum deformibus viris est vita
I mean how does that not seriously violate the WTO rules.
Because it's pretty consistent with international practice. It's the reason an American company can't fly between two European cities, or why a European airline can't fly between two American cities.
Hope is the denial of reality
Well, who's gonna challenge it? You bring up someone else's petty mercantile shit, you kind of open yourself up to having them come after all your petty mercantile statutes in return.
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.
If I use my grocery store gas points before they expire on Saturday, I'll get $1.30 off each gallon!
My car only has a ten plus gallon tank and gets really good gas mileage. Been trying to time my tank re-fueling with these gas points, so I'll fill my car plus a 5 gallon jug for my lawn mower, even though that's not "in accordance" with the rules. Even then, I won't reach the high gallon limit others get for filling up their SUVs, trucks, or RVs.
Good. Mercantilism is stupid.
No, not good.
Everyone being too protective of their mercantile statutes to challenge anyone else's means nothing will change, which is bad, if you dislike Mercantilism.
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.
4.15 for shell premium. nice little jump from last time
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
$3.95 for 87 octane here. Got mine @ $2.65 tonight with those discount points.
I meant good to "open yourself up to having them come after all your petty mercantile statutes in return."
Mercantilism should have been condemned to the dustbin of history 300 years ago.
You guys run on 87 RON?
Standard is 95 here. Premium pumps are up to 99 RON.
Paul?
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Octane Rating standard, known as the Research Octane Number - RON.
It's what you see on the pumps when you fill up.
The higher the RON, the more efficient the fuel.
EDIT: Hm .. just wiki'd. There's a difference between the standard used in the US and elsewhere ... which explains why the US rating seems low.
Anti-Knock Index (AKI)
In most countries, including Australia and all of those in Europe, the "headline" octane rating shown on the pump is the RON, but in Canada, the United States and some other countries, like Brazil, the headline number is the average of the RON and the MON, called the Anti-Knock Index (AKI, and often written on pumps as (R+M)/2). It may also sometimes be called the Pump Octane Number (PON).
Difference between RON and AKI
Because of the 8 to 10 point difference noted above, the octane rating shown in Canada and the United States is 4 to 5 points lower than the rating shown elsewhere in the world for the same fuel. See the table in the following section for a comparison.
Efficient, sterile, immaculate, chrome-plated, perfect
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
The picture on that page is rare. Most places offer 87/89/91. Haven't seen 93 in a long time, and anything higher than that for the street racers usually comes from independent airports. There seems to be a trend right now of phasing out the middle grade, 89. Newish cars are being tuned to premium (91) gas and are being fitted with knock sensors, so that they can run on 87 with minimal spark knock.
My '07 Saturn is tuned to 91, but the '12 Accord gets 87.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Rand, why the funny font color? It doesn't go well with the default forum colors
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
Seriously? I copied and pasted from this page that's all, had people mention it a few weeks ago when pasting from other sites but if you can't copy/paste other people's quotes here that's stupid.Rand, why the funny font color? It doesn't go well with the default forum colors
The issue with your coloring has never really gone away. I've seen your posts edited by others to fix the problem.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Try using the "Remove Format" button directly after Copy/Pasting. Should fix the problem.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Obviously depends on where you live. Around here, 93 is more common than 91, and most stations offer all 4 grades. Those that only offer three, seem to offer 87/89/93.
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.
FYI this is why I have trouble trusting people who talk about raising gas prices/taxes to pay for "alternative investments". I mean, can you count how many ways this is a messed-up waste?
Vegas Rail: A Gamble Or Good Thing?
by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
VICTORVILLE, Calif. March 25, 2012, 12:50 pm ET
VICTORVILLE, Calif. (AP) — On a dusty, rock-strewn expanse at the edge of the Mojave Desert, a company linked to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants to build a bullet train that would rocket tourists from the middle of nowhere to the gambling palaces of Las Vegas.
Privately held DesertXpress is on the verge of landing a $4.9 billion loan from the Obama administration to build the 150 mph train, which could be a lifeline for a region devastated by the housing crash or a crap shoot for taxpayers weary of Washington spending.
The vast park-and-ride project hinges on the untested idea that car-loving Californians will drive about 100 miles from the Los Angeles area, pull off busy Interstate 15 and board a train for the final leg to the famous Strip.
Planners imagine that millions of travelers a year will one day flock to a station outside down-on-its-luck Victorville, a small city where shuttered storefronts pock the historic downtown.
An alliance of business and political rainmakers from The Strip to Capitol Hill is backing the project that could become the first high-speed system to break ground under President Barack Obama's push to modernize the U.S. rail network — and give the Democratic president's re-election prospects a lift in battleground Nevada.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has publicly blessed the train — it means jobs, he says — and it's cleared several regulatory hurdles in Washington.
Yet even as the Federal Railroad Administration considers awarding what would be, by far, the largest loan of its type, its own research warns it's difficult to predict how many people will ride the train, a critical measure of financial survival, an Associated Press review found.
There are other skeptics, as well.
"It's insanity," says Thomas Finkbiner of the Intermodal Transportation Institute at the University of Denver. "People won't drive to a train to go someplace. If you are going to drive, why not drive all the way and leave when you want?"
Construction cost projections have soared to as much as $6.5 billion, not including interest on the loan. Some fear taxpayer subsidies are inevitable.
Reid and other supporters point to research that shows 80,000 new jobs, but FRA documents show virtually all those would be temporary — no more than 722 would be permanent.
Victorville Mayor Ryan McEachron envisions a bustling transportation oasis with a hotel, restaurants, maybe even homes, on the proposed station site. He believes drivers can be enticed out of their cars, even in a region where the notion of rail travel can seem as distant as a New York subway.
The company is "going to have to market and market hard in order to get the ridership they need to support paying back the loan," the mayor says. "I think you can change the thinking."
Along with Reid, the president's most influential Democratic ally in Congress, the plan is being advanced by casino developer and contractor Anthony Marnell II, whose credits include building the Bellagio and Wynn Las Vegas and who heads Marnell Companies, the majority shareholder in DesertXpress; project consultant Sig Rogich, a Republican adviser to two presidential campaigns who founded Nevada's most influential lobbying and advertising company; and Canadian transportation giant Bombardier, a DesertXpress strategic adviser that wants to supply its rail cars.
A decision on the loan is not expected until mid-year, but the company has spent some $30 million sharpening its plan and refining ridership projections. Rising gas prices and increasing traffic congestion could help ticket sales, and the company is touting reduced air pollution from fewer cars on the road.
"It's Victorville that makes the project work," says chief executive Andrew Mack.
Far from being a train from nowhere, company planners see the struggling city of 115,000, once a stop on storied Route 66, as a collection point for millions of drivers heading north to Las Vegas. Bringing the line deeper into the populous Los Angeles area would raise formidable challenges, Mack said, from crossing numerous freeways to finding space for track.
The lot now stippled with spindly creosote bushes has room for 15,000 parking spaces. Bags would be checked through to hotel rooms. At peak hours, trains would depart every 20 minutes. Mack says an average round-trip fare could be as low as $75, though documents estimate $100.
Mack says the train will deliver convenience — and for a price, luxury — that studies show passengers want.
DesertXpress officials once boasted they would build the line with private dollars, but they now plan to rely on FRA financing to cover the bulk of the cost. Mack didn't directly answer if the company turned to the FRA because private investors were unwilling to take the risk, but said the loan terms are attractive.
"When somebody comes and tells me I will build a system that pays for itself, I'm suspicious," said Hasan Ikhrata, executive director of the Southern California Association of Governments, which questioned ridership potential in a report last year. "There is no high-speed rail system in the world that operates without subsidies."
The company is still arranging as much as $1.6 billion needed to cover its share of the construction bill for the roughly 200-mile line. Investments could hinge on the loan approval, which requires the company to convince the FRA that taxpayers won't get stiffed. In a worst-case scenario, the train would become government property if the company fails.
The low-interest loan would be about three times the combined amount the FRA loaned 32 other projects through the Railroad Rehabilitation & Improvement Financing program since its inception in 2002.
If successful, the train could be a forerunner in a national high-speed rail network, while bringing a rich return for investors and delivering visitors to Vegas. It would also give Nevada residents an option to Southern California, albeit many miles from tourist hotspots like Hollywood or the beaches.
The company is seeking funds at a time when a proposed high-speed train running from San Francisco to Southern California has been questioned because of ballooning costs and fear it will sap taxpayer dollars.
Early company research projected the train would lure away nearly one in four car, bus and airline travelers, initially about 4 million people annually. The company now pegs first-year ridership at about 3 million, but that projection was trimmed to 2.5 million by government analysts who urged more study.
The risks are summarized in a 2007 study commissioned by ACS Infrastructure North America, a division of a global construction company that DesertXpress says is seeking a role in the project, that found most travelers were "broadly happy" going to Las Vegas by car or airline. While most travelers would be open to riding a train, the report warned the company would need to lure riders with pampering.
On clear roads, the 270-mile drive from downtown Los Angeles to Las Vegas takes about four hours. Planners say the train ride from Victorville to Las Vegas would take about 80 minutes, but it's debatable how much time would be saved after parking, boarding the train and reaching a Las Vegas hotel.
Round-trip flights from Los Angeles to Las Vegas can be booked for under $100.
The dream of uniting Southern California and Las Vegas by high-speed rail has been discussed for decades. In the mid-1980s, Las Vegas officials predicted a line would be running by 2000. DesertXpress, which would roughly parallel Interstate-15 on a pair of new tracks, has predicted for several years that it would soon break ground.
Reid initially backed a rival project that planned to use magnetic power to reach Orange County, but he jumped trains shortly after Rogich became co-chair of Republicans for Reid, a Nevada group with ties to the gambling industry that helped Reid win re-election in 2010.
The senator's office disputes any connection between his flip and Rogich's involvement in the campaign. Spokeswoman Kristen Orthman says Reid's decision was based on the viability of DesertXpress, while the magnetically powered project languished.
Marnell, another member of Republicans for Reid, is president of one of several companies under the DesertXpress corporate banner. He and his son, M Resort, Spa and Casino President Anthony Marnell III, are also investors.
Federal records show the elder Marnell has donated at least $15,000 to political committees connected to Reid since 2010, including a $5,000 donation in May to the senator's Searchlight Leadership Fund.
According to federal records, the company has spent at least $270,000 since 2006 lobbying at the House, Senate and federal offices.
Other investors include North Dakota businessman Gary Tharaldson, who donated $10,000 to a Reid committee in March, and transportation expert Tom Stone, who organized DesertXpress with partner Mack in 2005.
Nevada records show DesertXpress HRS Corp., headed by the elder Marnell with his son as a director, was authorized to issue 25,000 shares of stock. DesertXpress declined to say who held those shares, if issued, and in what amounts.
Not everyone in the high desert is on board with the project.
Thirty miles northeast of Victorville on I-15, officials in Barstow fear they'll lose 2,300 jobs. The impact will be "unsustainable," Mayor Joe Gomez wrote to LaHood in October 2010, according to a letter released under a public records request.
To appease those concerns, McEachron said the station's proposed location was moved about halfway to Barstow. The patch of vacant land is so remote the city would have to annex it.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=149344582
Chaloobi, if you happen to stop by any time soon, I am sad to say I don't think I'll be answering your post. Too much time has passed. But I started a new thread following somewhat similar lines today in the Serious forum, and we can continue there if you'd like.No problem. Travelling for business.... cool. You're like all important and stuff.
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Are you using the WYSIWYG editor? BTW in Windows you can often use "Ctrl + Shift + V" to paste without formatting.
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
Yep, WYSIWYG. I honestly don't think I'll remember to use Ctrl+Shift+V (used Ctrl+V without problems for more than 20 years now, be a difficult habit to break).
Haven't been inclined to deal with this lately because it's rehashing a lot of old stuff. But a while ago I ran across a nice summary of the problems in your thinking here:Ah, I thought we were finally talking about the different types of trading and speculation, but apparently not.
The CFTC and energy analysts have been looking into the types of speculation, comparing those fundamentals of supply/demand and bubbles, how it impacts end prices, and writing about it for a while now. There are plenty of web sites (bettermarkets.com is one example) and news sources that explain it better than I've been able to so far:
http://www.economist.com/node/21529073
In particular, look at the graph comparing long/short balances to price changes; there's essentially zero correlation.
IN A speech to European policymakers in June Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, encouraged his audience to be serious about “fighting the mafia”. He was not referring to a French Tony Soprano, but rather that other breed of criminal: commodity speculators, whom many politicians on either side of the Atlantic blame for dramatically pushing up the price of oil and food and contributing to volatility.
America is leading the charge. As part of a new financial-reform law, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is proposing “position limits” on the amount of derivative contracts, including futures and swaps, a trader can hold for 28 commodities. No one will be allowed to control more than 25% of deliverable US supply for these commodities, which include oil, corn and gold, unless they are hedging for “bona fide” commercial purposes. CFTC commissioners could vote on the new rules as soon as September 22nd. Egged on by the likes of Mr Sarkozy, the European Commission is likely to issue a draft of similar rules in October.
Arguments about whether to establish position limits are incendiary. After the CFTC released its draft rules earlier this year, more than 13,000 letters of comment flooded in. Although there is a clear link between commodity prices and politicians’ denunciations of speculators (the latter usually follow spikes in the former), the relationship between speculation and commodity prices is not as obvious.
It is true that there has been a rush of money into commodities. According to Barclays Capital, $431 billion is invested in commodities now, up from $141 billion in 2006, as investors use commodities to diversify portfolios, hedge for inflation and profit from emerging markets’ appetite for raw materials. But a host of studies have been unable to find conclusive evidence that an influx of commodity-index investors causes increased volatility, and you can look in vain for a pattern between investor flows and prices (see chart).
Price movements, even rapid and large ones, can usually be attributed to the fundamentals of supply and demand. A recent report by JPMorgan also argues that soaring production costs are now a heavy influence on commodity prices. As the rules careen forward, position limits still have many critics, even at the CFTC. “With such a lack of concrete evidence, my fear is that at best position limits are a cure for a disease that does not exist or, at worst, a placebo for one that does,” said Michael Dunn, a CFTC commissioner, at a hearing in January. The September 22nd vote may be delayed as the commissioners try to work out their differences.
There is good reason to worry that position limits will harm markets more than help them. Producers of commodities enter into futures contracts to hedge their risk, but need a party to take the other side. Investors will become pickier about the contracts they enter into as a result of the limits, which may cause markets to become less liquid, worsening volatility rather than reducing it.
This risk will be particularly great for long-dated futures, where fewer traders are active, because it will be easier to reach the 25% ceiling. Moreover, because the value of the open market, and thus the value of the limits, is determined by the CFTC every year, some predict that permissible positions will shrink each year as investors in general pull back. Others worry that if the rules are not co-ordinated, investors may move to trade commodity derivatives in places like Dubai and Singapore, where their positions will not be constrained, thereby depriving the American market of more liquidity.
Swap dealers are particularly bent out of shape about the proposed rules. Certain agricultural commodities have had position limits in place for years. Swap dealers used to be able to qualify for exemptions to hedge their risk after they wrote a swap. They won’t be able to do so under the new rules, and that will make them pickier about which swaps to write, sapping their own profits and again hurting liquidity. Some hedge funds—especially commodity trading advisers that follow rule-driven, often computerised, investment strategies—will have to rewrite their programs to take the new limits into account.
As is so often the case with new rules, the details are devilish. The proposals mandate that firms aggregate their positions across different units and subsidiaries, even if some of them are taken on behalf of outside investors and even if firms have only a small, minority stake in the units in question. This would be a headache for banks and asset managers, many of which would probably be in violation of the rules. Some pension funds are also concerned that they will butt up against the limits if they have to calculate positions this way.
There are some odd omissions, too. The new rules only target derivatives and don’t set position limits for physical commodities, which means that anyone looking to corner a market could theoretically snap up as much as he likes so long as he doesn’t do it through futures contracts.
Despite all the hullabaloo, not everyone is expecting havoc. “My guess is that when the actual rules are in place, it’s going to be underwhelming,” says Brian Hurst of AQR Capital Management, a quantitative hedge fund. For politicians looking to claim victory against evil speculators, “underwhelming” is not going to be enough. If the new position limits do not do anything to curb commodity-price rises, they may just write fresh rules. Having declared war on the mafia, it will be hard to give up the fight.
Try to put the little finger over both keys. But I think it would be better if paste without formatting would be the default and Crtl+Shift+V would be paste with format.
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
Is there a special reason for this? Your posts are no where near large or intricate enough to warrant the full editor over the standard one.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
I haven't been inclined to deal with this lately, either. But for different reasons.The price shifts in gas are a symptom of greater problems, and our reluctance to deal with the fundamentals is one or our biggest flaws. Those fundamentals are more about energy profits than energy policy. This has been going on for as long as any of us can remember.
Gas prices take their place as a VIP subject when its costs are high, but as soon as it goes below $3/gallon it's no longer very important. That's not how national energy policies should be made. Especially not when that essentially means military policies or nation building policies are made for oil-rich countries.
So, essentially, your problem is a lack of communism?
You do realize that there's still a communist regime or two around that you could emigrate to, if you're really that concerned with the evils of price-volatility, right?
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.
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