Sounds like my dentist. Even though dental insurance is offered at my work I dropped it because it covered so little and by paying by debit card I get a deal. When I got a cavity insurance ended up covering about $25 of it which was rather annoying since that was about 2 months of premiums and I ended up paying the other $325 or so out of pocket. It only costs $55 for the bi-annual cleaning and checkup so I said fuck it and dropped coverage since the coverage was a joke anyway.
And even a convoluted as your situation is it still is fairly simplistic in the medical billing world as you had just one bill for $30,000 for the birth of a child. The bills for the birth of my children were byzantine messes. There were bills for the hospital room, the OR, the surgeon, the obgyn, the nurses that came to visit, etc. all of which had their own deductibles and percentages paid. After that I became keenly aware that our medical system needed some serious reform. I really should have gotten one bill for each birth not some giant fucking pile of bills that was impossible to understand.
You are forgetting another main issue with these systems that probably leads to a good number of the other issues you listed. Low level managers fighting to keep their little fiefdoms. The worst was an insurance company my previous company was doing a project for that was killed by these low level managers who's departments would go away entirely. The worst was the one who managed a group of people who's jobs were to pick up a pile of paper that got printed out from one system over night and type that information into a different system the next day.
You probably have standing to sue the insurance company, the US government is a different story. You have been harmed by the insurance company but proving that you have been harmed by the US government is is different story. Same thing with the employer mandate, if your employer would have been required to offer you insurance and didn't thus you had to spend your own money you could sue your employer since you were harmed since the individual mandate still is in force.
But does the individual have standing to sue the government or just the insurance company? I have a feeling that it will be found that while they have standing to go after the insurance company they will be found to not have standing to sue the government since it wasn't the government that harmed them but the insurance company. Also even if the government is successfully sued what is to prevent the Executive branch from telling the Judaical branch to go pound sand.
The question is who has standing to take this to court. I believe anyone in the congress (house or senate) would have standing as it stands a reasonable separation of powers issue it would create issues if the president decided to ignore the court if they sided with the congress. As you point out the will seems to be lacking in either chamber of congress for various reasons. So that means that some citizen of the US would have to sue but to do so requires standing. To have standing that individual would need to show that they have been harmed by the law not being enforced as written. This could be as simple as exceeding the out of pocket limit but that might be difficult initially. My guess is that first one would need to sue the insurance company and when they defend themselves point out that they don't have to follow the law they will either lose or win. If they lose then the insurance company can appeal or just sort it out for you and the case dies there. If the insurance company wins then you get to appeal it and proceed until it gets resolved. I am not sure that there is a clean way to rope the government into it so maybe one would need to list them as a co defendant in the suit. Then again IANAL but am fascinated by the law since it is suppose to be unambiguous but that rarely seems the case given our current legal system.
No I didn't pay $6k for a transmission and install, that is what is would have cost and given the vehicle it wasn't out of line from my guess. This was for a daily driver so I couldn't just do it my self at my convenience given how large of a job it is and my lack of free time (it probably would have taken the better part of a month since I would have to order a rebuilt transmission and wait for it to get shipped). I have replaced engines and transmission in vehicles in a single day and it isn't that hard but that was before I had kids and other responsibilities. Also finding a tranny of known rebuild quality is an issue for those ZF transmission and one would about $3500 for that car since a junkyard ones is almost unheard of at this point (a fairly rare vehicle). Add in the rather soft exhaust that needed to be dropped to get the old tranny out and the new one in, that would have probably needed to be replaced and now parts and labor for the job start rapidly approaching that $6000 mark. Even a cheap rebuilt tranny for that car was $2000 for just the transmission.
I never want a vehicle with a automatic but when I got that car all I could find that met my requirements (4 doors and rear wheel drive and basically mechanically perfect) in my price range were vehicles with automatics and I didn't have a vehicle I could drive until I found an ideal car. This last time around that wasn't the case but still trying to find a 4 door, RWD car, with a manual, that is mechanically perfect is difficult but I had time since I had another vehicle to drive while I looked for a few weeks.
I like where you are going with that. It is similar to my idea I laid out earlier in the thread but still very intriguing and different. The only issue I see is something like the budget bill which is a massive monstrosity. Even if it were to be cut up into little bits it would still be a mess since it would have to either be cut up into such small bits at to be impossible to sort out (deciding what committees get created is how the process is gamed at this level) or are smaller but still large (think of a bill for funding for the army level instead of funding for the entire military or entire federal government) as to be a full time job for most of a year. I still am intrigued with your idea though.
I am torn on term limits but like the idea of getting more churn in congress, especially the senate. The problem is with a large turnover you get lots of unnecessary chaos since they have no idea of what they are doing (the 2010 congressional freshmen) and are easily swayed or just cause issues for the sake of causing issues. If there were to be term limits I would want them fairly high for those reasons. So to me a number like 12 to 18 years (2 or 3 senate terms) seems reasonable but at that point they are basically career politicians anyway and that is part of the problem. I would much prefer that they be part time and only are in session for 6 months of the year get a pittance for pay (they are part time and their living expenses for that period are covered) but be housed and fed (think college dorms) while in session. I would prefer it if they actually had to go and work in the real world and actually live amongst their constituents. There are only a couple of people in my neighborhood that I wouldn't vote for if they ran for office as they are just awful people where as there isn't a single person in elected office that I could have voted for that I would want in office as they all* seem to be awful people.
Maybe President Obama but that is mostly because he seems like someone I could sit and shoot the breeze over the fence with but that just may be a carefully crafted image that is presented. I still didn't vote for him since I don't agree with a lot of his policies and statements.
I have thought that maybe we do need something like a draft or jury duty selection for another section of the legislative branch of government.
These people are all paid a reasonable salary (1/4 the median annual income of their congressional district) for one year
Are selected at random from all 18+ social security number holders (best I can come up with)
All they have to do is vote up or down on legislation.
Any legislation that fails to get 50% +1 of the votes (not voting is the same as a no vote) does not progress to the president.
They only vote on legislation passed by both the house and senate.
They don't get paid unless they voted on 90% of the legislation
They have 2 weeks to vote on any piece of legislation
They can submit their vote electronically, over the pone(even text message works), or by mail (chosen when they start)
They do this part time and still maintain their day job
The list of individuals is completely confidential
The pool of people is large like 1,000,000 people. This is my favorite one since individuals have a reasonable chance of being selected in their lifetimes and thus might choose to be better informed voters and more active participants in government overall.
While this wouldn't stop crap like what is mentioned in the article by it's self, it might be enough to get some real hope and change for America as people become more involved. I write and call my state and federal congress critters frequently and none of them like me any more since I am informed, active, and I talk to my neighbors. I tell the campaign volunteers/workers I don't vote based off of party but based off the candidate and I try to make the defend the candidate they are working for.
I think it would have to get substantially worse than it is now before domestic grass-roots terrorism is a real threat to anyone, even the 1%. At the moment it is another tool for them to use to consolidate power the boogie man under the bed. It will get worse and then it will get really fucking bad. We will probably have a few political leader and wealthy individuals assassinated in the process. I am actually surprised it didn't happen under FDR but I think only WWII saved him so maybe what is needed is another massive world war in which we are the victors. Then again that still means things need to get worse and then they get really fucking bad.
Given the internet's memory I would love to hear some of the Obama radio ads you mention as my state was a foregone conclusion and didn't' get any real presidential advertising (a few blurbs), seriously my state is the only one that went for Mondale it doesn't get any more blue. We got a few pie in the sky ones that I assume every market got but nothing specific.
I have often wondered if I could pull off selling my soul to the rich and powerful to be elected president only to up and decide to not run for a second term and just put the screws to them and be a good leader that tries to do what is right. Then again I find a-minus-minus a bit too amusing and think the run of the mill politics needs a bit of a shakeup.I thought Jesse Ventura was a bad Governor of Minnesota but he was good for Minnesota politics but a few elections out and things are starting to get stagnant again.
I haven't studied fuel cells all that much to know the details but thanks for the info. I knew there were issue with poisoning from impurities on the fuel side but wasn't aware of poisoning from the oxidizer side as well. I usually just ignore them as they seem like a way to get people to dump a lot of money into your pet project because it involves clean hydrogen. They seem like they are at best a stopgap between hydrocarbon based transportation and electric based transportation but full electrics are progressing much faster. People seem to always forget that while hydrogen is clean when oxidized creating it is a bitch (lots of energy needed for either electrolysis or creating from natural gas) and storing it in a compact form is also a bitch (high pressure container that doesn't suffer from embrittlement).
That is why I have a nice daily driver. I like small cars and I really like how they handle but I really don't like driving my Jeep because it handles like a truck. I also like being able to park in a compact cars only spot and have plenty of space. I do use the Jeep it for truck things which is why I got it and I put less than 5000 miles on it a year so it is really cheap to own. I really couldn't just go rent a vehicle to do some things as taking it "off road" void your contract and you have to pay for all the damage and I always come back from hunting with new scratches in the paint, new dents, or some broken piece of trim. I don't have a boat but I go to really remote areas where an official road means there aren't trees with trunks larger than 3" in diameter growing in the dirt trail, or the river you have to ford is only a little more than a foot deep at the crossing in the dry part of the year. The other problem is I drive a lot and when you get well past a quarter million miles it doesn't matter what the original warranty was it is long expired when the vehicle has the catastrophic failure.
My issue was with people being concerned with resale or trade in value, the only resale value I get is what the junkyard will give me for it when they show up with a tow truck to haul it off. If we take my previous 16 year old car that had 275,000 miles on it when the transmission failed it was a good low cost vehicle. Up until that point the only non standard work I had done on it was replacing a coil pack as the rest was just regular maintenance and repairs (hoses, belts, plugs, filters, fluids, some suspension parts, brakes, etc). I paid $10k for it owned it 6 years, put 175,000 miles on it, and beat that vehicle pretty hard, I did truck things with a sports sedan and got in trouble a number of times (this is why I also have a 4WD vehicle now) as well as drag racing it. When the automatic transmission went (weak spot in vehicles with automatics) the car was only worth $2000 if it had a working tranny but the repair would have been at least $6000 so it wasn't worth it but the junk yard hauled the vehicle off and gave me $350 for it.
It will go down but it shouldn't decrease that much. It sounds like someone has a poorly running vehicle that has problems maintaining proper fuel trim and the excess oxygen in the E10 fuel is really confusing they system. Time to clean or replace the MAP/MAF sensor, change the O2 sensor(s), and do a tune up with new plugs and wires, maybe check for vacuum leaks as well. There may be other things wrong but those things usually affect how a vehicle reacts to E10 vs Non-Oxy fuel the most. That is where I would start unless his truck is so old it has a carburetor in it which case the simple solution would be to adjust the carb for one fuel type and then only put in that fuel type.
Sounds like you have a poorly running truck look into getting it tuned up and probably replace the O2 sensors, and/or clean or replace your MAP/MAF sensor. Yes you should lose some mileage when running on 10% ethanol but not anything close to 10%. Looking at only energy density ethanol has about 2/3 the energy per unit volume as gasoline does so a fuel with a 10% ethanol blend (E10) would have about 96.7% the energy of non-oxygenated gasoline (non-oxy). Given that E10 formulated to have very similar burn properties to non-oxy at the same octane rating I would expect to see a drop but typically in the 3-4% range. I live in a state where most fuel is E10 so when I find non-oxy fuel I will use it and I do see a mileage gain but typically in the 3-4% range as I described above. This has been turn on a number of occasions over many years with 5 different vehicles of varying build quality, engines sizes, and mileages. Then again I keep my stuff properly tuned and maintained. I have found that my mileage is far more variable depending on how I drive the vehicle than on the fuel choice. Granted I get really good mileage on non-oxy when I am driving to get good gas mileage but even that is only a few percent better than driving that same way on E10. I also get really shitty mileage when I go out racing with that car regardless of what fuel I am using.
I use to like beets until my mother was cooking them once and forgot about them on the stove. They slowly simmered until all the water was gone and then started smouldering. That was one of the worst smells in my life, it still smelled like beets but burned and overpowering. Even since I can't stand the smell of them and when I smell them I want to go puke.
You forget the energy released from the rapidly expanding gas like popping a balloon but at 5000psi or what ever those tanks run at. Yes I know that these fears are overstated and I personally don't buy them but it is the general population and regulators that need convincing. Also my understanding of fuel cells is that one of their major drawbacks is poisoning of the cell by impure hydrogen. If this is something that will be refillable or is to be maintained by the average person the cells will need to be able to tolerate higher levels of impurities because there are still people that regularly plug fuel filters or get water in their fuel lines. With existing hydrocarbon fuels this is easily corrected (replace the filter or drain the tank and lines and refill with fresh fuel) but I am not sure it will be a cheap or easy repair for a poisoned fuel cell.
they end up buying 10yr old trucks with no warranty and little to no value on a trade in after they have paid them off.
That is why lots of people can't really afford a good vehicle. I have been the last owner of every vehicle I have ever bought and just kept fixing them until they have the catastrophic failure or were hit as it is the cheapest thing to do. I will admit I own an SUV but I haven't driven it since I got my current daily driver after I blew the tyranny in my previous daily driver. Before that the last time I drove my SUV was about 2 months ago when I helped my sister move into her new house. I do drive it sparingly but then I am always hauling stuff, going hunting or going fishing with it and taking it down questionable roads that require high clearance, 4WD or both. Then again it isn't a nice shiny new SUV but a beat up Jeep Cherokee where the only options added was posi on both axles.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like my dentist. Even though dental insurance is offered at my work I dropped it because it covered so little and by paying by debit card I get a deal. When I got a cavity insurance ended up covering about $25 of it which was rather annoying since that was about 2 months of premiums and I ended up paying the other $325 or so out of pocket. It only costs $55 for the bi-annual cleaning and checkup so I said fuck it and dropped coverage since the coverage was a joke anyway.
If I only had mod points today.
And even a convoluted as your situation is it still is fairly simplistic in the medical billing world as you had just one bill for $30,000 for the birth of a child. The bills for the birth of my children were byzantine messes. There were bills for the hospital room, the OR, the surgeon, the obgyn, the nurses that came to visit, etc. all of which had their own deductibles and percentages paid. After that I became keenly aware that our medical system needed some serious reform. I really should have gotten one bill for each birth not some giant fucking pile of bills that was impossible to understand.
You are forgetting another main issue with these systems that probably leads to a good number of the other issues you listed. Low level managers fighting to keep their little fiefdoms. The worst was an insurance company my previous company was doing a project for that was killed by these low level managers who's departments would go away entirely. The worst was the one who managed a group of people who's jobs were to pick up a pile of paper that got printed out from one system over night and type that information into a different system the next day.
You probably have standing to sue the insurance company, the US government is a different story. You have been harmed by the insurance company but proving that you have been harmed by the US government is is different story. Same thing with the employer mandate, if your employer would have been required to offer you insurance and didn't thus you had to spend your own money you could sue your employer since you were harmed since the individual mandate still is in force.
But does the individual have standing to sue the government or just the insurance company? I have a feeling that it will be found that while they have standing to go after the insurance company they will be found to not have standing to sue the government since it wasn't the government that harmed them but the insurance company. Also even if the government is successfully sued what is to prevent the Executive branch from telling the Judaical branch to go pound sand.
The question is who has standing to take this to court. I believe anyone in the congress (house or senate) would have standing as it stands a reasonable separation of powers issue it would create issues if the president decided to ignore the court if they sided with the congress. As you point out the will seems to be lacking in either chamber of congress for various reasons. So that means that some citizen of the US would have to sue but to do so requires standing. To have standing that individual would need to show that they have been harmed by the law not being enforced as written. This could be as simple as exceeding the out of pocket limit but that might be difficult initially. My guess is that first one would need to sue the insurance company and when they defend themselves point out that they don't have to follow the law they will either lose or win. If they lose then the insurance company can appeal or just sort it out for you and the case dies there. If the insurance company wins then you get to appeal it and proceed until it gets resolved. I am not sure that there is a clean way to rope the government into it so maybe one would need to list them as a co defendant in the suit. Then again IANAL but am fascinated by the law since it is suppose to be unambiguous but that rarely seems the case given our current legal system.
No I didn't pay $6k for a transmission and install, that is what is would have cost and given the vehicle it wasn't out of line from my guess. This was for a daily driver so I couldn't just do it my self at my convenience given how large of a job it is and my lack of free time (it probably would have taken the better part of a month since I would have to order a rebuilt transmission and wait for it to get shipped). I have replaced engines and transmission in vehicles in a single day and it isn't that hard but that was before I had kids and other responsibilities. Also finding a tranny of known rebuild quality is an issue for those ZF transmission and one would about $3500 for that car since a junkyard ones is almost unheard of at this point (a fairly rare vehicle). Add in the rather soft exhaust that needed to be dropped to get the old tranny out and the new one in, that would have probably needed to be replaced and now parts and labor for the job start rapidly approaching that $6000 mark. Even a cheap rebuilt tranny for that car was $2000 for just the transmission.
I never want a vehicle with a automatic but when I got that car all I could find that met my requirements (4 doors and rear wheel drive and basically mechanically perfect) in my price range were vehicles with automatics and I didn't have a vehicle I could drive until I found an ideal car. This last time around that wasn't the case but still trying to find a 4 door, RWD car, with a manual, that is mechanically perfect is difficult but I had time since I had another vehicle to drive while I looked for a few weeks.
I like where you are going with that. It is similar to my idea I laid out earlier in the thread but still very intriguing and different. The only issue I see is something like the budget bill which is a massive monstrosity. Even if it were to be cut up into little bits it would still be a mess since it would have to either be cut up into such small bits at to be impossible to sort out (deciding what committees get created is how the process is gamed at this level) or are smaller but still large (think of a bill for funding for the army level instead of funding for the entire military or entire federal government) as to be a full time job for most of a year. I still am intrigued with your idea though.
I am torn on term limits but like the idea of getting more churn in congress, especially the senate. The problem is with a large turnover you get lots of unnecessary chaos since they have no idea of what they are doing (the 2010 congressional freshmen) and are easily swayed or just cause issues for the sake of causing issues. If there were to be term limits I would want them fairly high for those reasons. So to me a number like 12 to 18 years (2 or 3 senate terms) seems reasonable but at that point they are basically career politicians anyway and that is part of the problem. I would much prefer that they be part time and only are in session for 6 months of the year get a pittance for pay (they are part time and their living expenses for that period are covered) but be housed and fed (think college dorms) while in session. I would prefer it if they actually had to go and work in the real world and actually live amongst their constituents. There are only a couple of people in my neighborhood that I wouldn't vote for if they ran for office as they are just awful people where as there isn't a single person in elected office that I could have voted for that I would want in office as they all* seem to be awful people.
Maybe President Obama but that is mostly because he seems like someone I could sit and shoot the breeze over the fence with but that just may be a carefully crafted image that is presented. I still didn't vote for him since I don't agree with a lot of his policies and statements.
I have thought that maybe we do need something like a draft or jury duty selection for another section of the legislative branch of government.
These people are all paid a reasonable salary (1/4 the median annual income of their congressional district) for one year
Are selected at random from all 18+ social security number holders (best I can come up with)
All they have to do is vote up or down on legislation.
Any legislation that fails to get 50% +1 of the votes (not voting is the same as a no vote) does not progress to the president.
They only vote on legislation passed by both the house and senate.
They don't get paid unless they voted on 90% of the legislation
They have 2 weeks to vote on any piece of legislation
They can submit their vote electronically, over the pone(even text message works), or by mail (chosen when they start)
They do this part time and still maintain their day job
The list of individuals is completely confidential
The pool of people is large like 1,000,000 people. This is my favorite one since individuals have a reasonable chance of being selected in their lifetimes and thus might choose to be better informed voters and more active participants in government overall.
While this wouldn't stop crap like what is mentioned in the article by it's self, it might be enough to get some real hope and change for America as people become more involved. I write and call my state and federal congress critters frequently and none of them like me any more since I am informed, active, and I talk to my neighbors. I tell the campaign volunteers/workers I don't vote based off of party but based off the candidate and I try to make the defend the candidate they are working for.
I think it would have to get substantially worse than it is now before domestic grass-roots terrorism is a real threat to anyone, even the 1%. At the moment it is another tool for them to use to consolidate power the boogie man under the bed. It will get worse and then it will get really fucking bad. We will probably have a few political leader and wealthy individuals assassinated in the process. I am actually surprised it didn't happen under FDR but I think only WWII saved him so maybe what is needed is another massive world war in which we are the victors. Then again that still means things need to get worse and then they get really fucking bad.
Given the internet's memory I would love to hear some of the Obama radio ads you mention as my state was a foregone conclusion and didn't' get any real presidential advertising (a few blurbs), seriously my state is the only one that went for Mondale it doesn't get any more blue. We got a few pie in the sky ones that I assume every market got but nothing specific.
No it isn't. I would feel much safer in Kenya.
Given how bad the current and previous administrations have been maybe accomplishing almost absolutely nothing is what was needed.
I have often wondered if I could pull off selling my soul to the rich and powerful to be elected president only to up and decide to not run for a second term and just put the screws to them and be a good leader that tries to do what is right. Then again I find a-minus-minus a bit too amusing and think the run of the mill politics needs a bit of a shakeup.I thought Jesse Ventura was a bad Governor of Minnesota but he was good for Minnesota politics but a few elections out and things are starting to get stagnant again.
It is not like this administration hasn't done similar things before.
I haven't studied fuel cells all that much to know the details but thanks for the info. I knew there were issue with poisoning from impurities on the fuel side but wasn't aware of poisoning from the oxidizer side as well. I usually just ignore them as they seem like a way to get people to dump a lot of money into your pet project because it involves clean hydrogen. They seem like they are at best a stopgap between hydrocarbon based transportation and electric based transportation but full electrics are progressing much faster. People seem to always forget that while hydrogen is clean when oxidized creating it is a bitch (lots of energy needed for either electrolysis or creating from natural gas) and storing it in a compact form is also a bitch (high pressure container that doesn't suffer from embrittlement).
That is why I have a nice daily driver. I like small cars and I really like how they handle but I really don't like driving my Jeep because it handles like a truck. I also like being able to park in a compact cars only spot and have plenty of space. I do use the Jeep it for truck things which is why I got it and I put less than 5000 miles on it a year so it is really cheap to own. I really couldn't just go rent a vehicle to do some things as taking it "off road" void your contract and you have to pay for all the damage and I always come back from hunting with new scratches in the paint, new dents, or some broken piece of trim. I don't have a boat but I go to really remote areas where an official road means there aren't trees with trunks larger than 3" in diameter growing in the dirt trail, or the river you have to ford is only a little more than a foot deep at the crossing in the dry part of the year. The other problem is I drive a lot and when you get well past a quarter million miles it doesn't matter what the original warranty was it is long expired when the vehicle has the catastrophic failure.
My issue was with people being concerned with resale or trade in value, the only resale value I get is what the junkyard will give me for it when they show up with a tow truck to haul it off. If we take my previous 16 year old car that had 275,000 miles on it when the transmission failed it was a good low cost vehicle. Up until that point the only non standard work I had done on it was replacing a coil pack as the rest was just regular maintenance and repairs (hoses, belts, plugs, filters, fluids, some suspension parts, brakes, etc). I paid $10k for it owned it 6 years, put 175,000 miles on it, and beat that vehicle pretty hard, I did truck things with a sports sedan and got in trouble a number of times (this is why I also have a 4WD vehicle now) as well as drag racing it. When the automatic transmission went (weak spot in vehicles with automatics) the car was only worth $2000 if it had a working tranny but the repair would have been at least $6000 so it wasn't worth it but the junk yard hauled the vehicle off and gave me $350 for it.
It will go down but it shouldn't decrease that much. It sounds like someone has a poorly running vehicle that has problems maintaining proper fuel trim and the excess oxygen in the E10 fuel is really confusing they system. Time to clean or replace the MAP/MAF sensor, change the O2 sensor(s), and do a tune up with new plugs and wires, maybe check for vacuum leaks as well. There may be other things wrong but those things usually affect how a vehicle reacts to E10 vs Non-Oxy fuel the most. That is where I would start unless his truck is so old it has a carburetor in it which case the simple solution would be to adjust the carb for one fuel type and then only put in that fuel type.
Sounds like you have a poorly running truck look into getting it tuned up and probably replace the O2 sensors, and/or clean or replace your MAP/MAF sensor. Yes you should lose some mileage when running on 10% ethanol but not anything close to 10%. Looking at only energy density ethanol has about 2/3 the energy per unit volume as gasoline does so a fuel with a 10% ethanol blend (E10) would have about 96.7% the energy of non-oxygenated gasoline (non-oxy). Given that E10 formulated to have very similar burn properties to non-oxy at the same octane rating I would expect to see a drop but typically in the 3-4% range. I live in a state where most fuel is E10 so when I find non-oxy fuel I will use it and I do see a mileage gain but typically in the 3-4% range as I described above. This has been turn on a number of occasions over many years with 5 different vehicles of varying build quality, engines sizes, and mileages. Then again I keep my stuff properly tuned and maintained. I have found that my mileage is far more variable depending on how I drive the vehicle than on the fuel choice. Granted I get really good mileage on non-oxy when I am driving to get good gas mileage but even that is only a few percent better than driving that same way on E10. I also get really shitty mileage when I go out racing with that car regardless of what fuel I am using.
I use to like beets until my mother was cooking them once and forgot about them on the stove. They slowly simmered until all the water was gone and then started smouldering. That was one of the worst smells in my life, it still smelled like beets but burned and overpowering. Even since I can't stand the smell of them and when I smell them I want to go puke.
You forget the energy released from the rapidly expanding gas like popping a balloon but at 5000psi or what ever those tanks run at. Yes I know that these fears are overstated and I personally don't buy them but it is the general population and regulators that need convincing. Also my understanding of fuel cells is that one of their major drawbacks is poisoning of the cell by impure hydrogen. If this is something that will be refillable or is to be maintained by the average person the cells will need to be able to tolerate higher levels of impurities because there are still people that regularly plug fuel filters or get water in their fuel lines. With existing hydrocarbon fuels this is easily corrected (replace the filter or drain the tank and lines and refill with fresh fuel) but I am not sure it will be a cheap or easy repair for a poisoned fuel cell.
they end up buying 10yr old trucks with no warranty and little to no value on a trade in after they have paid them off.
That is why lots of people can't really afford a good vehicle. I have been the last owner of every vehicle I have ever bought and just kept fixing them until they have the catastrophic failure or were hit as it is the cheapest thing to do. I will admit I own an SUV but I haven't driven it since I got my current daily driver after I blew the tyranny in my previous daily driver. Before that the last time I drove my SUV was about 2 months ago when I helped my sister move into her new house. I do drive it sparingly but then I am always hauling stuff, going hunting or going fishing with it and taking it down questionable roads that require high clearance, 4WD or both. Then again it isn't a nice shiny new SUV but a beat up Jeep Cherokee where the only options added was posi on both axles.
Ugly bags of mostly water
"Lady Liberty was asking for it! She was showing leg."
That was only some ankle at it is still in a shoe. It could have been worse though.