Amen! I'm all for red light cameras. I've been nearly T-boned too many times to count as I live just off a major arterial where drivers ignore red lights at will.
There's no expectation of privacy when you're in your car on a public road. And if the cameras generate money fvor the city because people are breaking the law, GOOD! At least here in Minneapolis, when we had the cameras no lights were retimed. I hope the cameras come back. We need them.
It's precisely that redistribution that we want to happen. We're one country, so we have a responsibility to each contribute something to make our society whole. The poster just above you gave a good example about PA and highway maintenance.
Many times the earmarks involve federal policy. Any transportation earmark almost certainly has to go through USDOT for planning, etc.
We can and certainly should have a debate on whether individual earmarks are appropriate. But there is real value to debating these things at the federal level.
Heck, I would love to see every Congressman's page on Wikipedia updated with all the earmarks for their districts and states and their vote on the bill which funded them.
Congressional rules already require members to report their earmarks. More such rules are in the works.
And why such hating on earmarks? Earmarks in and of themselves are a good thing because they allow members to bring very local concerns and needs into the federal budgeting process. Sometimes the executive branch doesn't quite understand the local situations on the ground. That's why Congress controls the purse strings.
As long as earmarks are disclosed and go through some kind of vetting process (which they do now), I have no problem with them.
I live in Minnesota. I also happen to have worked on transportation issues for many years. I know a bit about how this all works.
Most of the ARRA transportation money comes through the Surface Transportation Program, which is based on a formula for state and mode allocation. The $94,093,115 for public transportation in Minnesota comes from that formula. The money goes to the state's Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) and DOTs. The MPO for the Twin Cities is a combination of the Metropolitan Council and the Transportation Advisory Board (TAB). The TAB is technically a governing body of the Met Council, due to the fact that the Met Council is not composed of elected officials.
The TAB is currently reviewing the list of projects to receive funding. They're quite limited on the transit side because few big transit projects are ever "shovel ready" the way roads are due to the federal planning process. I could write a book about the enormous advantage skew toward roads over transit in federal policy, but that's for another time. The fact that no transit projects are shovel-ready is a symptom of that.
So the TAB is spending quite a bit of time deciding where road money should go. MN-610 is definitely in. There's a debate over the I-494/US-169 interchange. That started just yesterday. There are many bridges in the Twin Cities metro area that need rehabilitation or replacement.
Greater Minnesota is the other big part of this. I'm less familiar with this side but my assumption is that Mn/DOT is making a determination of how to prioritize funds using its long-term transportation plan.
The point is that this all takes time. recovery.gov cannot show where the money goes until we actually decide where it's going to go.
There's no big conspiracy here. The fact that states have to explicitly report how the money gets used is a huge step forward over the way highway dollars usually get spent. Lots of people (including me) are working hard to ensure the new transportation authorization being written right now adds lots more language about transparency and accountability.
Of course, none of us (except possibly any Intel or AMD legal types reading this) has any idea what's in ther license agreements. However, if the agreements don't cover certain extensions to technology, it's possible this is a move to leverage something in current negotiations around things like ISA extensions.
AMD produced SSA 4a which is mostly junk but scalar streaming stores are quite useful. Maybe Intel wants that.
Intel has SSE 4.1 and 4.2 but the real interesting bit is AVX. AMD almost certainly wants that.
AMD probably wants some of the Nehalem power technology. Intel may want some of that from AMD as well.
This is probably an ongoing negotiation spilling out into the public. It's not at all clear whether the current licensing agreement covers the above technologies and/or other things. These kinds of agreements get renegotiated all the time. Nothing to see here, move along.
It's about time. The internet marketplace has had enough time to grow. Taxes are what keeps society running. If we dry up those sources of revenue, we see services cut and infrastructure begin to crumble. We had a rather dramatic example of the latter recently here in Minnesota.
People should be paying their taxes. It's your responsibility for being part of society.
What is it about complexity that everyone loves so?
Nobody loves it. But the fact is that Republicans refuse to raise taxes. Period. But they are more than willing to raise "fees" and that's what a toll is. Really, it's a move to privatize as much of this country as possible.
That doesn't explain the fact that gas prices have plummeted in the U.S. but transit ridership keeps climbing. The trend has been upward for many years now, It didn't just start with the latest round of gas price spikes.
The gas tax will continue to be a declining source of revenue as fuel efficiency increases and people turn to electric vehicles. Long-term, we need something different. But for now, we do need to raise fuel taxes.
The stimulus bill doesn't have nearly enough money to repair all of our roads. We have a tremendously overbuilt road system in the U.S. The cost of maintaining it is unsustainable.
If we want transportation, we have to pay for it. Thanks to certain elements in Congress and in state legislatures, we've been unable to raise taxes to keep pace with maintenance, let along make improvements to the system.
That's right. The cost of raw materials has gone up. Construction inflations is quite a bit higher than general inflation. It seems that developing countries actually want the same things we have.
And why not? The gas tax doesn't nearly cover the cost of the roads. The federal highway trust fund is bankrupt. We need new revenue if we're going to avoid a transportation collapse.
As far as social order, except in highly congested cities, cars keep people isolated
And you think this is a good thing? The deep sickness of our society is that people are too afraid of each other. We've been conditioned to be that way. We'd have a whole lot easier time of things if people would just accept that the vast majority of people are honest and just want to live a better life together.
The average work week is 10 hours longer than in most of Europe, without cars there's simply not enough time per day to go where you gotta be.
So let's invest more in transit so we can make service more redily available. We need to do it anyway to handle the energy crisis.
Consider Europeans also get many more vacation days and personal time that's 2-3x as much as Americans to take a half day off to visit the doctor or do personal business.. things Americans do at lunchtime.. in their cars.
The solution there is not to encourage us to do what is dehumanizing. The solution is to learn from others and fix the real problem.
I already pay for roads; it's called paying my taxes.
Actually, you don't come close to paying for the roads with your taxes. Nor does anyone else. Here in Minnesota, state and federal gas taxes only cover about 1/3 of the cost. Why do you think the federal highway trust fund is bankrupt? We're going to have a major collapse of our transportation network. The stimulus bill will only be a very temporary fix unless we raise new revenue.
Nope. The gas tax doesn't cover costs as it is. What we need to be doing is looking toward the time where fuel taxes are going to drop even more dramatically than they have. We need to start preparing for taxing things like Vehicle Miles Traveled.
Noticed how alternate routes are not being maintained?
This is the inevitable outcome of privatizing the road system. Orange County, CA had this experience with Highway 91. There was a no-compete clause in the contract that forbid upgrades and maintenance to the public road network. Guess what happened?
If the every road could be made a toll road, then the people who drove on the roads would pay for them, and people who take public transportation or choose not to own a car wouldn't pay.
That's not the way it works. Right now fuel taxes come nowhere close to paying for the cost of roads. And really, not everything should be completely covered by fees. Transit is not and should not have that requirement either.
Transportation is a public good and as such everyone should participate in its upkeep.
Portand, OR is experimenting with using GPS technology to levy a tax on Vehicle Miles Traveled. That not only addresses the electric car issue but also removes the incentive to use lots of fuel so as to fund the road network.
Places with "extra" tolls are typically high-expense areas like tunnels & bridges where the gasoline toll is not enough to cover costs.
Nowhere in the U.S. do fuel taxes cover costs. It's not even close. The federal highway trust fund is bankrupt. We need to raise the fuel tax and start investing in alternatives like a tax on Vehicle Miles Traveled so that we can wean ourselves off of oil.
Slashdot Mirror
The "restrict" keyword gets you most of the Fortran advantages in C, though a lot of people misunderstand what it means.
The C++ folks are workinmg on a memory model specification intended to open up parallelism. I haven't kept up on the details of that, though.
How about ASKING them rather than calling the Morons?
Ah, but that would mean that Linus would have to grow up and actually lead.
Amen! I'm all for red light cameras. I've been nearly T-boned too many times to count as I live just off a major arterial where drivers ignore red lights at will.
There's no expectation of privacy when you're in your car on a public road. And if the cameras generate money fvor the city because people are breaking the law, GOOD! At least here in Minneapolis, when we had the cameras no lights were retimed. I hope the cameras come back. We need them.
It's precisely that redistribution that we want to happen. We're one country, so we have a responsibility to each contribute something to make our society whole. The poster just above you gave a good example about PA and highway maintenance.
Many times the earmarks involve federal policy. Any transportation earmark almost certainly has to go through USDOT for planning, etc.
We can and certainly should have a debate on whether individual earmarks are appropriate. But there is real value to debating these things at the federal level.
Heck, I would love to see every Congressman's page on Wikipedia updated with all the earmarks for their districts and states and their vote on the bill which funded them.
You mean like this?
Congressional rules already require members to report their earmarks. More such rules are in the works.
And why such hating on earmarks? Earmarks in and of themselves are a good thing because they allow members to bring very local concerns and needs into the federal budgeting process. Sometimes the executive branch doesn't quite understand the local situations on the ground. That's why Congress controls the purse strings.
As long as earmarks are disclosed and go through some kind of vetting process (which they do now), I have no problem with them.
I live in Minnesota. I also happen to have worked on transportation issues for many years. I know a bit about how this all works.
Most of the ARRA transportation money comes through the Surface Transportation Program, which is based on a formula for state and mode allocation. The $94,093,115 for public transportation in Minnesota comes from that formula. The money goes to the state's Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) and DOTs. The MPO for the Twin Cities is a combination of the Metropolitan Council and the Transportation Advisory Board (TAB). The TAB is technically a governing body of the Met Council, due to the fact that the Met Council is not composed of elected officials.
The TAB is currently reviewing the list of projects to receive funding. They're quite limited on the transit side because few big transit projects are ever "shovel ready" the way roads are due to the federal planning process. I could write a book about the enormous advantage skew toward roads over transit in federal policy, but that's for another time. The fact that no transit projects are shovel-ready is a symptom of that.
So the TAB is spending quite a bit of time deciding where road money should go. MN-610 is definitely in. There's a debate over the I-494/US-169 interchange. That started just yesterday. There are many bridges in the Twin Cities metro area that need rehabilitation or replacement.
Greater Minnesota is the other big part of this. I'm less familiar with this side but my assumption is that Mn/DOT is making a determination of how to prioritize funds using its long-term transportation plan.
The point is that this all takes time. recovery.gov cannot show where the money goes until we actually decide where it's going to go.
There's no big conspiracy here. The fact that states have to explicitly report how the money gets used is a huge step forward over the way highway dollars usually get spent. Lots of people (including me) are working hard to ensure the new transportation authorization being written right now adds lots more language about transparency and accountability.
Of course, none of us (except possibly any Intel or AMD legal types reading this) has any idea what's in ther license agreements. However, if the agreements don't cover certain extensions to technology, it's possible this is a move to leverage something in current negotiations around things like ISA extensions.
AMD produced SSA 4a which is mostly junk but scalar streaming stores are quite useful. Maybe Intel wants that.
Intel has SSE 4.1 and 4.2 but the real interesting bit is AVX. AMD almost certainly wants that.
AMD probably wants some of the Nehalem power technology. Intel may want some of that from AMD as well.
This is probably an ongoing negotiation spilling out into the public. It's not at all clear whether the current licensing agreement covers the above technologies and/or other things. These kinds of agreements get renegotiated all the time. Nothing to see here, move along.
It's about time. The internet marketplace has had enough time to grow. Taxes are what keeps society running. If we dry up those sources of revenue, we see services cut and infrastructure begin to crumble. We had a rather dramatic example of the latter recently here in Minnesota.
People should be paying their taxes. It's your responsibility for being part of society.
That's right. Contact your Congressional representatives, your Senators and your state legislators and demand they raise the gas tax.
What is it about complexity that everyone loves so?
Nobody loves it. But the fact is that Republicans refuse to raise taxes. Period. But they are more than willing to raise "fees" and that's what a toll is. Really, it's a move to privatize as much of this country as possible.
That doesn't explain the fact that gas prices have plummeted in the U.S. but transit ridership keeps climbing. The trend has been upward for many years now, It didn't just start with the latest round of gas price spikes.
Yes.
We pay mostly with property taxes and a whole lot of subsidies, just like everywhere else in the country.
The gas tax will continue to be a declining source of revenue as fuel efficiency increases and people turn to electric vehicles. Long-term, we need something different. But for now, we do need to raise fuel taxes.
The stimulus bill doesn't have nearly enough money to repair all of our roads. We have a tremendously overbuilt road system in the U.S. The cost of maintaining it is unsustainable.
If we want transportation, we have to pay for it. Thanks to certain elements in Congress and in state legislatures, we've been unable to raise taxes to keep pace with maintenance, let along make improvements to the system.
That's right. The cost of raw materials has gone up. Construction inflations is quite a bit higher than general inflation. It seems that developing countries actually want the same things we have.
The fuel tax doesn't nearly cover the cost. We need new revenue in the system.
And why not? The gas tax doesn't nearly cover the cost of the roads. The federal highway trust fund is bankrupt. We need new revenue if we're going to avoid a transportation collapse.
As far as social order, except in highly congested cities, cars keep people isolated
And you think this is a good thing? The deep sickness of our society is that people are too afraid of each other. We've been conditioned to be that way. We'd have a whole lot easier time of things if people would just accept that the vast majority of people are honest and just want to live a better life together.
The average work week is 10 hours longer than in most of Europe, without cars there's simply not enough time per day to go where you gotta be.
So let's invest more in transit so we can make service more redily available. We need to do it anyway to handle the energy crisis.
Consider Europeans also get many more vacation days and personal time that's 2-3x as much as Americans to take a half day off to visit the doctor or do personal business.. things Americans do at lunchtime.. in their cars.
The solution there is not to encourage us to do what is dehumanizing. The solution is to learn from others and fix the real problem.
Mass transit systems fail in all but the largest of cities.
Oh really? Then how come transit ridership has climbed across the country?
I already pay for roads; it's called paying my taxes.
Actually, you don't come close to paying for the roads with your taxes. Nor does anyone else. Here in Minnesota, state and federal gas taxes only cover about 1/3 of the cost. Why do you think the federal highway trust fund is bankrupt? We're going to have a major collapse of our transportation network. The stimulus bill will only be a very temporary fix unless we raise new revenue.
Nope. The gas tax doesn't cover costs as it is. What we need to be doing is looking toward the time where fuel taxes are going to drop even more dramatically than they have. We need to start preparing for taxing things like Vehicle Miles Traveled.
Noticed how alternate routes are not being maintained?
This is the inevitable outcome of privatizing the road system. Orange County, CA had this experience with Highway 91. There was a no-compete clause in the contract that forbid upgrades and maintenance to the public road network. Guess what happened?
Privatizing public good is never a good idea.
If the every road could be made a toll road, then the people who drove on the roads would pay for them, and people who take public transportation or choose not to own a car wouldn't pay.
That's not the way it works. Right now fuel taxes come nowhere close to paying for the cost of roads. And really, not everything should be completely covered by fees. Transit is not and should not have that requirement either.
Transportation is a public good and as such everyone should participate in its upkeep.
Portand, OR is experimenting with using GPS technology to levy a tax on Vehicle Miles Traveled. That not only addresses the electric car issue but also removes the incentive to use lots of fuel so as to fund the road network.
Places with "extra" tolls are typically high-expense areas like tunnels & bridges where the gasoline toll is not enough to cover costs.
Nowhere in the U.S. do fuel taxes cover costs. It's not even close. The federal highway trust fund is bankrupt. We need to raise the fuel tax and start investing in alternatives like a tax on Vehicle Miles Traveled so that we can wean ourselves off of oil.