The Washington, DC area got hit with the largest snowstorm in years last December, and then in late January a few more inches fell. Despite the fact that cross country skiing was just sublime in both cases, these events caused all kinds of problems, partly because the people responsible for clearing the roads were relying – as usual on chemicals, rather than snowplows and sand.

The pre-treating of the roads with salt has actually created ice under the beautiful, dry and powdery snow. There was no reason for spreading chemicals, particularly in view of the fact that the temperatures were much too low for salt to do any good. What it indeed caused were numerous accidents, and often the inability to slow down, stop, or climb inclines – all courtesy of the Virginia, Maryland and District of Columbia departments of transportation.

Where a plowed (or even unplowed) roadway would have been fairly easily to negotiate without salt, the authorities – that are apparently already running out of money because of their extravagant use of chemicals and hiring of often unnecessary private trucks – the salt-melted and then re-frozen snow created expensive and often very dangerous skating rinks for cars, usually in all the worst places.

Seems like still another example of our tax dollars at work.

As we write this on Friday morning, another snowstorm, which is supposed to last more than 24 hours and dump around two feet of snow in the area, is fast approaching.

The snow blowers, snow shovels and bags of salt have long been unavailable. The authorities – such as they might be – have strongly recommended that everyone stay indoors for the duration and basically get ready to watch the Super Bowl. Consequently, the grocery stores got totally overwhelmed by mobs of often glassy-eyed shoppers, filling their carts to overflowing with milk, beer, Wonder “bread”, pretzels, bottled water and the inevitable soup cans, “flavored” with among other things high fructose corn syrup.

Even late in the evening on Wednesday and Thursday it was almost impossible to find a parking spot at any of the local supermarkets. Inside, practically every person pushing a shopping cart was breaking the indoor speed limits, the shelves were often bare and the lines at the registers snaked around into almost every aisle. It appeared that it would take at least an hour just to get to a cashier, or a self-checkout gizmo.

If six, or even 24 inches of snow can cause such mayhem, we wonder how things would look, if we actually faced a real, serious emergency…

Technorati Tags: Nation’s Capital, Panic, Snow salt, Snowmageddon, stores, washington

During his campaign Barack Obama promised change, transparency and accountability. Most of us embraced that promise, remembering how the Bush White House was operating and how often Vice President Dick Cheney was “in an undisclosed location”. It is also hard not recall how the Patriot Act was shoved up our collective asses, before hardly anyone had any chance of even reading the hundreds of pages of which the act consists. Some say that members of Congress were given “about five minutes” to read it, before it was voted on.

How could any legislator worth his salt even consider voting on a very serious piece of legislation, without actually reading it? Lets not forget that many of those, who have obediently voted for the Patriot Act are still members of Congress. How can that be tolerated?

That was during the supposed “emergency” caused by the events of 9/11. The latest no-read vote was held because of the economic “emergency”.

The $787-billion “stimulus” plan was signed, after being negotiated largely in closed -door sessions, with only a very limited number of physical copies available. Lawmakers had less than 24 hours to review the over 1,000-page bill before the vote was taken – hardly enough time to read a bill with such critical implications for our economy.

The “stimulus” bill is full of convoluted and almost impenetrable language -including more than 100 uses of one form or another of the word ”except.”

In short: there are the haves and the have-nots. The billionaires and millionaires are the haves and that qualifies them to be the puppet masters – with the rest of us playing the role of puppets.

Just because some non-tax paying “expert” says that the government is the one and only entity, which can bailout the haves, doesn’t make it a fact. But facts and reality do not of course have anything to do with it. They have the control not only over the money supply and printing of it and we, the puppets can only bitch about it and pay our taxes to the Federal Reserve, which will be more than happy to loan the money back to the government at the interest rate of their choice.

And so it goes, except now in much larger, and in fact unprecedented amounts – larger than probably almost any expenditure that the U.S. has made during its entire history – even when it is adjusted for inflation.

Let’s not forget the earlier “bailout” payments to Wall Street and the banks and the planned additional $2 trillion, or even larger “helping hand” that Secretary of the Treasury Geithner has mentioned not that long ago.

Long live transparency, accountability and the democratic system!

And for those with a lot of time o their hands, we offer the full, after-the-fact text of the House Stimulus bill.

Technorati Tags: bailout, banks, change, federal reserve, obama, stimulus, transparency, washington

After some of the euphoria, related to the latest U.S. presidential election died down a bit, the next problem is of course housing the three, or four million people, who are expected to descend on the Washington, DC area for the January 20^th presidential inauguration.

You must have read stories of houses, apartments, college dorms, garages, even large closets being offered for rent at a cost of sometimes many thousands of dollars per night. Just checked the numerous offerings on the web and can offer you a few interesting examples:

3 Bedroom Condo, Clarendon, Virginia

$3,900 per night /4night min

2 Bedroom Condo, North Bethesda, Maryland

$1,900 per night /3 night min

How about this one? $20,000 per week / 5br  – Luxury Executive Home/Gated Community

As it turns out this place is at least a 30-minute drive from downtown DC. Twenty grand for a week’s rental? Somebody must be nuts.

Let’s not forget the inaugural balls and the entire repertoire of equally ridiculous events. Having witnessed several presidential inaugurations so far, I have never, ever had the slightest urge to freeze my butt off, standing along the parade route on Pennsylvania Avenue, between the Capitol and the White House, to attend the actual swearing in ceremony and certainly no desire whatsoever to join the mobs of out-of-towners, dressed in their very, very best at the myriad boring, often tasteless and usually expensive inaugural balls.

I distinctly remember strolling through Washington in the evening, a few hours after the second Bush 43 inauguration and seeing thousands of overdressed, wide-eyed country people excitedly rushing to the balls. Not my kind of crowd, folks. This inauguration will certainly be a much more uplifting occasion that any that I have witnessed so far. Politicus U.S. has, after all endorsed Barack Obama nearly a year ago and I am happy to have him as president, despite some questionable cabinet choices, but please, do spare me the parade and the balls.

This post is not really about the presidential inauguration, but rather about the personal cost that the unfortunate individuals; “lucky” to have been elected to the most powerful office in the world almost invariably pay with their health, lack of privacy and so forth.

I have scoured the web and came up with a series of photographs of several of our recent presidents – at the beginning of their terms and towards the end.

Let’s start with our latest. Barack Obama just a few months ago and again in December 2008. The man hasn’t even taken office and the wear and tear is already evident in his face. It is pretty sad that what the worry, lack of sleep and responsibility can do to a man and so quickly.

Our recommendation to President-elect Obama would be to take a hint from Ronald Reagan, who delegated a lot of the day-to-day responsibilities to others, demanded concise, one-page summaries of events and generally managed to stay relatively relaxed, finishing his two terms looking none the worse for wear.

Not so poor Jimmy Carter, who has obviously aged quite a bit, during his four years in office, worrying about the Iran hostage crisis and the failed rescue mission, nor Bill Clinton, after the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the subsequent impeachment efforts.

The present occupant of the White House stopped being chipper and carefree after he finally realized the incredible follies that his administration has committed. I don’t think that they need to be listed here again, but he seems like a different man now. Finally some humility and age seem to be showing. Nobody would age so much within eight years, outside of the White House.

Clinton run (if you can call that gait of his running) and so did Bush, until problems with the knees forced him to switch to mountain biking.

As far as we know Obama frequents the gym and plays basketball from time-to-time.

Exercise can help, but look at Reagan. Pretty much rode his horse at the ranch and chopped some wood and in fact managed to leave the White House at least looking quite fresh indeed.

Technorati Tags: bush, carter, clinton, expensive, fever, inauguration, obama, presidency, rentals, toll, washington