Wednesday, December 22, 2010

A Separate Reality

Insanity Now!
Caught a few minutes of Democracy Now! (note the exclamation point) on Monday. Host Amy Goodman has a new spin on the extension of the Bush tax rates. Tax rates are cut for millionaires/billionaires, but actually go up for the working poor! Wow, we don’t think even Colonel Bernie Sanders was peddling that line.

The Marquise de Merteuil
There was no time for a valedictory or even a toast. Pelosi still had history to make, inequities to erase, strategies to craft. (Washington Post, 12/22/10)

Opinion piece from the WAPO? No, objective news reporting! Later in the day, Pelosi helped a blind man cross the street, offered scientists some ideas on curing disease, and pitched in laying sandbags to stop hillside erosion in California. All in a day’s work for the Speaker.

Simple(ton) Math
An audit of Burlington Telecom, prepared for the Department of Public Service and released this month, concluded the city-owned telecom utility incurred a debt of more than $50 million to build a network that reaches fewer than 5,000 residents and ignored rules imposed by the state to protect Burlington taxpayers from risk. (Burlington Free Press, 12/22/10)

So let’s get out the calculator. $50 mil divided by 5,000 subscribers equals $10,000 per subscriber. Assume an average annual bill of $1,000 per and you get a smoking return…after 10 years!

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