Memnison Journal

The US has a significant honey and honeybee problem - we only produce about half the honey we consume.  Part of that is because of massive bee ailment problems, part because pollination pays better than the honey,  and the stuff that is coming into the USA is often adulterated or watered down - and in [...]

Well, they had them, and not all of them were found and properly disposed of,  apparently….

With huge numbers of people unemployed, and more rolling into the offices, the states are running out of money to pay benefits.  Like 30 out of 50 states.
Drill-baby-drill just went *choke*, as oil companies are suddenly unwilling to finance new exploration.   Existing wells are being shut down as uneconomical to operate, and forecasts are [...]

Beginning in 1992, a series of tax laws combine to create large tax credits for certain Hummer buyers. By 2002, the New York Times reports that, thanks to changes in the tax code during the Bush administration, an eligible buyer can deduct $34,912 of the $48,800 base price of the Hummer.
July 2002: The Hummer [...]

Rumors about a new Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
A typical approach has been playing out at the Environmental Protection Agency, where the Obama team is led by Lisa Jackson, commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, and Robert Sussman, a former Clinton official and now a lawyer and fellow at the Center [...]

WaPo:
Few federal agencies are expected to undergo as radical a transformation under President-elect Barack Obama as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department, which have been at the epicenter of many of the Bush administration’s most intense scientific and environmental controversies.
The agencies have different mandates — the EPA holds sway over air and water [...]

Joe Klein in Time on Bush’s last months in office:
This is a presidency that has wobbled between those two poles — overweening arrogance and paralytic incompetence.
The latter has held sway these past few months as the economy has crumbled. It is too early to rate the performance of Bush’s economic team, but we have [...]

He also mooted the possibility that the Russian government would buy some of its metal products to shore up falling demand.
At under $50 a barrel, the Russian government is taking a beating, because their Big Ticket was oil and gas.   The entire economy was not based on industrial production, but in raking in petrodollars.   [...]

Article from a local newspaper about the groundwater contamination - in my neighborhood.   Yes, I knew about this.  Lockformer has a big sign out for 18 acres of property behind their factory for sale. 

So here’s my ideas, half-baked:

Make the deal comprehensive, and mostly a take it or leave it scenario.  This sucker has been a political football for decades, and this ends here right now.
All three companies essentially go into a central, nationalized receivership corporation.
The equity in these businesses is pretty much gone, in any event.  [...]

I’m actively interested in your poisition on this matter.  Feel free to sound off inside *politely*.
My own struggles on this:

NYT: Tesla Motors is laying off workers and putting off its car another year or two.
He blamed the worsening financial crisis and the credit crisis for the upheaval. “It’s not an understatement to say that nearly every business will be impacted by what has unfolded in the past weeks,” Mr. Musk wrote. The cutbacks come [...]

People at a gas station in Wisconsin Rapids, WI, find out that while the signs gave a price around $3.50 a gallon, the actual pump price was around $0.35 a gallon.  For an hour and a half, that gas station got a huge amount of business.

Robert Reich, the former Labor Secretary and one of my favorites on economics, writes:
After the market closed today, Bank of America announced a significant deterioration in people’s ability to repay credit-card and other consumer debt.  The central fact is this: consumers in the real economy are coming to the end of their capacities to keep [...]

Going back to my response posts,  I want to stress that I never assume that anyone voting against Obama is a racist, or that Republicans are racists, or that either on the Republican ticket is a racist.  I know better.
I’ve lived with serious racists, had racism and sexism used against me and mine (you do [...]