Useful links & commentary on the state budget “process”….
“$310 million – we could buy a boat for everyone in the state to get across the river.?
— JFC Co-Chair Scott Fitzgerald on the cost of the proposed Stillwater Bridge spanning the St. Croix River between Wisconsin and Minnesota in northwest Wisconsin.
?This is a very technical Web site. This is not just Mapquest.?
— DOT Secretary Frank Busalacchi defending the cost of a $650,000 interactive site for the Marquette Interchange.
United Airlines “was trying to put the squeeze on Air Wisconsin” when it put that business up for bid, said Michael Boyd, president of Boyd Group Inc., an aviation industry consulting firm in Evergreen, Colo.
He said United’s executives probably figured they could force Air Wisconsin to cut the prices it charges United Airlines to keep that business.
“Air Wisconsin ruined that little game” when it reached the agreement to provide financing to US Airways in return for getting a piece of its regional carrier business, Boyd said.
I think United might, perhaps be squeezing too hard (perhaps they have no choice). Having recently flown through Chicago, it seems that American’s regional jet operation is less chaotic…..
Herron put no money down for her tidy one-bedroom, borrowing the entire purchase price of $211,000. To keep her monthly payments as low as possible, she got an adjustable-rate mortgage that won’t require her to pay any principal for three years.
Thanks to her “interest-only” loan, the 911 police dispatcher was able to afford, barely, her first home. She now has a stake in California’s sizzling real estate market. As her home increases in value, she plans to use some of that equity to pay down her credit cards.
GROWING numbers of policy analysts and politicians are saying that it may finally be time to consider a value-added tax as part of our federal revenue system. In years past, I would have been in the forefront of those denouncing the idea. But now, reluctantly, I have joined the pro-V.A.T. side. Here’s why.
There are many arguments against a value-added tax, which is essentially a sales tax that applies at each stage of production. It is costly to put into effect, and it hits the poor and the elderly hardest because they spend a higher percentage of their income.
When you look back, what products have inspired you to say, “Wow, that’s a beautiful piece of work?”
Moore: Well, the ones I think of as landmarks were not necessarily beautiful pieces of work, but they turned out to be economically viable. The first dynamic RAM we made at Intel is with that category–the old 1103. It was a 1K DRAM and that was our first really big-revenue product. I guess I have to put the first microprocessor in that category too. It was very slow, but it did the job that it was designed to do. There’ve been a lot of things since that have been very important economically. I tend to think of them as more evolutionary products.
The Department of Homeland Security’s privacy board chose as its chairman Paul Rosenzweig, a conservative lawyer best known in technology circles for his defense of the Pentagon’s Total Information Awareness project. Bowing to privacy concerns, Congress pulled the plug on the program two years ago.
Nuala O’Connor Kelly, the department’s chief privacy officer, nominated Rosenzweig for the job during the group’s first meeting in a downtown hotel here. Rosenzweig is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a former Justice Department trial attorney.
Finally, Thompson voiced his regret just one day after Medicare’s trustees announced that the drug benefit by itself has an unfunded liability 60 percent larger than that of the entire Social Security program. (The unfunded liability for all of Medicare is nearly six times that of Social Security.) Medicare’s financial outlook has grown so dire that its two public trustees broke with the trustees who are members of Bush’s Cabinet to say that it is in far worse shape that Social Security.
MP3 audio files & transcripts (how 21st century!) of this excellent series:
The DenverChannel writes that the Colorado senate is voting on a bill that would support local municipal wifi…. (still no wifi at the Madison airport…)
Mark Cuban on the death of the music cd.