November 12th, 2006
According to today’s Parade magazine, the UBS Bank calculated how long it takes an average worker around the world to earn enough to buy a Big Mac. If you live in Tokyo, apparently you can have a Big Mac soonest.
| City |
Minutes |
| Tokyo |
10 |
| New York |
13 |
| London |
16 |
| Hong Kong |
17 |
| Paris |
21 |
| Moscow |
25 |
| Rome |
39 |
| Beijing |
44 |
| Manila |
81 |
| Jakarta |
86 |
More
Tags: Big Mac, McDonalds, world economy, interesting trivia
September 9th, 2006
A Little Fun First
- Thursday Thirteen #2 — ribbiticus @ Pond Perspective offers some gems of advice. Here are my favorites:
5. It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.
10. Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.
11. We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull. Some have weird names, and all are different colors, but they all have to live in the same box.
12. A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.
13. Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.
More
Tags: Thursday Thirteen, Crayons, terrorism, Logan Airport, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Congress, wiretapping, Osama bin Laden, Mother Jones, liberals, 9/11, religion, aetheists, women, virginity, Journal of Sex Research Western soceity, involuntary virgins, economy, America
September 6th, 2006
- We Know The Who And The What, But What About The Why? — The (liberal)Girl Next Door asks what I’ve been asking all along: “Why out Valerie Plame?” The media seems content to have the mystery of who did the outing solved without wondering as to the why. Now that new evidence has come to light that Plame was working on the task force to determine whether or not Iraq had WMD, why was it so important to get her out of the way?
- But Bush has nothing on at all! — lambert @ CorrenteWire theorizes as to why there haven’t been any more terror attacks on American soil since 9/11 since we’re told every other day that an attack is right around the corner. If the terrorists are so competent and dangerous, why aren’t we living in a war-torn country where things are being blown up on a weekly basis? It can’t be that our security is safer; we’ve prove it isn’t.
A fully credible explanation for the fact that the United States has suffered no terrorist attacks since 9/11 is that the threat posed by homegrown or imported terrorists — like that presented by Japanese Americans during World War II or by American Communists after it — has been massively exaggerated. Is it possible that the haystack is essentially free of needles?
More
Tags: George W. Bush, terror attacks, 9/11, Terrorists, economy, irresponsible government, failed policy, Valerie Plame, WMD, Iraq, Conspiracy Theories, Matthew Fenton, National Naval Medical Center, Bathesda, Walter Reed, War, American soldiers, 101st Fighting Keyboarders
October 4th, 2005
Well, this is a little disturbing. Remember when Bush and his adminstration promised to help rebuild the Gulf Coast, including it’s economy? Remember how “reconstruction” was going to boost the Gulf Coasts local economy?
Companies outside the three states most affected by Hurricane Katrina have received more than 90 percent of the money from prime federal contracts for recovery and reconstruction of the Gulf Coast, according to an analysis of available government data. [“Gulf Firms Losing Contracts (Washington Post)”]
Among the contracts analyzed, 3.8 percent of the money went to companies that listed an Alabama address, 2.8 percent to firms in Louisiana and just 1.8 percent went for Mississippi contractors. Taken together, that amounts to less than $200 million. [“Gulf Firms Losing Contracts (Washington Post)”]
It’s not surprising that locals and local officials are unhappy with this raw deal. They rightfuly fear that most of the money will flow out of state and out of an area that was already economically suffering before Hurricane Katrina.
The Department of Homeland Security estimates that as of early last week, 72 percent of the $1.6 billion that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had committed so far to contracts for Hurricane Katrina relief went to small firms nationwide in either prime or subcontracts, said department spokesman Larry Orluskie. But he said only 6 percent of the funds have gone to companies in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama — a region where small firms make up a disproportionately large share of the economy. [“Gulf Firms Losing Contracts (Washington Post)”]
I keep thinking of the old saying about how if you give a man a fish, he’ll be hungry tomorrow but if you teach a man to fish, he’ll feed himself. The Gulf Coast needs help rebuilding but it shouldn’t be done for them by outside businesses that will take the money away and then abandon the area. The Gulf Coast needs to rebuild it’s own structure and the government needs to help them do that, not by providing overpriced contractors who underpay locals and take the profits somewhere else, but by giving local companies the chance to survive — plus, I’m willing to bet that local companies are more interested in doing things right because at the end of it all, they’ll still be there in the community.
Meanwhile, many local firms that want to work with the government say they continue to meet with frustration. Kendall Prewett said he has been trying for weeks to get government subcontracting work for his Mississippi-based debris removal firm, B & P Enterprises, but that neither the government nor the prime contractor, Florida-based AshBritt Inc., is returning his calls. “I don’t understand why all these people not from here are working, and the Mississippi contractors aren’t,” he said.
AshBritt referred requests for comment to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which said it is encouraging the award of subcontracting work to local companies. [“Gulf Firms Losing Contracts (Washington Post)”]
Hmmmm…so it’s not like people can just say all of those Southern people are all lazy and want everything done for them and handed to them by the government like I’ve been hearing/reading of late. There are people who want to work, want to help their communities, and want to get on with their lives, but the government is ignoring them in favor of bigger, more expensive, outside companies…makes a lot of sense really when you consider how much money FEMA spent driving all that ice around the country only to part it in New England.
Even so, the overall small percentage of contracts with local firms “suggests a lack of advance planning to tap local small business partners in an effective disaster response strategy,” Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), who chairs the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, said in a statement. [“Gulf Firms Losing Contracts (Washington Post)”]
Have I mentioned lately how much I like Olympia Snowe?
Tags: Gulf Coast, Hurricane Katrina, economy, Homeland Security, Olympia Snowe
