Tony K’s got something to say

WaPo reports:

Bolton said that a draft charter presented Thursday by the U.N. General Assembly president, Jan Eliasson, was not tough enough to ensure that nations that abuse human rights would be barred from joining the council. He said he was under instructions from Washington to reopen negotiations on the text or postpone deliberations on a new rights body for several months.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and other supporters of the compromise warned that there is no better deal to be struck and that the U.S. strategy could undermine their efforts to create an improved, though imperfect, human rights body. “I think we should not let the better be the enemy of the good,” Annan told reporters Monday in Geneva.

This is disappointing but expected. I don’t agree with the U.S. on this, we look like we are being a bully just to be a bully, and doing nothing more than tarnishing our reputation and impeding the progress this resolution presents.

I prefer not to have Sudan on the Human Rights Committee, don’t you?? Not quite sure how Mr. Bolton can make his arguments with a clear conscience.

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I just watched a GMC commercial for the new Yukon (sorry Ken, I ain’t hatin’ though). the commercial begins with a field of green energy wind turbines. My interest was piqued, thinking it was a commercial about environmental sustainability. But then the truck came out and I was a bit taken back. […]

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when I was completing my undergrad in film I was working on a plan to fund a DV feature, this was ‘99, digital editing and cameras were not widespread on the consumer/affordable price point scene yet. So the scheme that my film partner and I concocted was to beg every one we knew, or briefly ever encountered in our lives for $10 and up, once someone donated in the $50 range we would give a credit. We sent letters (gasp–snail mail) and e-mails with promo materials of the video we were sending around the circuits and a synopsis of our new feature. we raised $3k, we needed $60k, $30 just to get going.

I was hit with a HUGE a-ha, right on, why didn’t I get the cobwebs clear to think of this when I read a Business 2.0 article about a site called Fundable. It was what we needed in 99 and would have made our lives so much easier.

Fundable is a peer-to-peer fundraising site that lets anyone post a fundraising goal and then others can give as much or as little, via credit card donations, as they choose. The donors are not charged until the goal is met, if the goal is not met before the project time expires no one is charged. Go, have a look and enjoy, I am rooting for the replacement for T.O. fund for the Eagles, but whether you are an Eagles fan or not, this site is a brilliant idea.

Hats off…

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I meant to write about the government’s tax cuts for large oil companies from Yesterday’s NYT and I saw it again this morning in the WaPo article, U.S. May Lose Billions in Oil, Gas Royalties Because of Law, and thought since the feds are giving up about 5 billion in tax revenue I better throw my 2 cents in…

From the NYT:

New projections, buried in the Interior Department’s just-published budget plan, anticipate that the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territory over the next five years without paying any royalties to the government.

Based on the administration figures, the government will give up more than $7 billion in payments between now and 2011. The companies are expected to get the largess, known as royalty relief, even though the administration assumes that oil prices will remain above $50 a barrel throughout that period.

The article goes on to note that the biggest issue for not changing the law on tax relief to the oil companies is in maintaining an incentive for deep water drilling, but(NYT):

If that view prevails, the government said it would lose a total of nearly $35 billion in royalties to taxpayers by 2011 — about the same amount that Mr. Bush is proposing to cut from Medicare, Medicaid and child support enforcement programs over the same period.

Seems that with record oil prices and the huge profits reported by oil and energy companies this year that tax relief is robbing the coiffures of our government and all US Citizens.

I am not an economist so maybe there is some amazing regression that can explain how cutting taxes, increased spending and larger deficits result in a flourishing healthy economy? How can we continue to pay out and not take anything in?

I wonder if I’ll get another $300 tax relief check from the government this year to help get the economy pumping…

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The situation in DC baseball is a true foray into the theater of the absurd, of course living in Washington and given the current political gems in office what’s new? The DC Council has come back, once again, approving a stadium contract deal, and once again MLB has a problem with it? What […]

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The Matrix is…real—whoa. Check out this articleChips that really get under your skin | CNET News.com

KAIST researchers modified an iPod nano and an earphone with its test chips for demonstration purposes. A user would need to keep a finger constantly pressed to a conductor on the iPod, which would send the audio signal through […]

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Hat tip to Daily Kos, of course someone who got rich off oil isn’t going to really be the leader for creating alternative fuel sources to oil. So Bush’s own administration admitted today that we shouldn’t take what he was saying literally, I mean why would he tell the truth or lead a forward thinking initiative:

WASHINGTON - One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America’s dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn’t mean it literally.

What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025.

But America still would import oil from the Middle East, because that’s where the greatest oil supplies are.

The president’s State of the Union reference to Mideast oil made headlines nationwide Wednesday because of his assertion that “America is addicted to oil” and his call to “break this addiction.”

Bush vowed to fund research into better batteries for hybrid vehicles and more production of the alternative fuel ethanol, setting a lofty goal of replacing “more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025.”

He pledged to “move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past.”

Not exactly, though, it turns out.

from Knight Ridder

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”–Mahatma Gandhi

Our leaders have no vision and only dangle hope in front of us, it is time to grab the reins and lead ourselves into a sustainable future for all not the few.

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